mio(oO 

.S74 


CHRISTIANITY  AND   THE  NATIONS 


By  Robert  E.  Speer 


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The  Duff  Lectures  for   1910 


MAY  19  B75 


CHRISTIANITY   AND 
THE   NATIONS 


By 


ROBERT    E.    SPEER 

Secretary  of  the  Board  of  Foreign  Missions  of  the  Presbyterian 
Church  in  the  United  States  of  America 


New  York  Chicago  Toronto 

Fleming    H.    Revell    Company 

London         and  Edinburgh 


Copyright,  igio,  by 
FLEMING  H.  REVELL  COMPANY 


New  York:  158  Fifth  Avenue 
Chicago :  80  Wabash  Avenue 
Toronto :  25  Richmond  St.,  W. 
London :  21  Paternoster  Square 
Edinburgh :    100  Princes   Street 


PREFACE 

THE  six  chapters  in  this  volume  comprise  the  Duff 
Missionary  Lectures  delivered  in  Scotland  on  the  foun- 
dation established  by  William  Pirie  Duff,  Esq.,  in  mem- 
ory of  his  father,  Alexander  Duff.  It  was  an  honour  to  be 
charged  with  any  work  associated  with  that  great  name.  Mem- 
ories still  exist  in  America  of  a  visit  from  the  famous  missionary 
in  1854,  when  under  his  leadership  a  missionary  conference 
was  held  in  New  York  City  from  which  deep  and  abiding 
influences  remain  with  us  to  this  day.  The  printed  reports 
of  the  conference  leave  Dr.  Duff's  public  address  uncom- 
pleted. The  reporter  was  so  carried  away  that  no  record  was 
made  of  the  rushing  torrent  of  eloquence  with  which  it  closed. 
But  above  a  sense  of  wonder  at  his  gift  of  convincing  and  per- 
suasive speech,  Alexander  Duff  left  upon  those  who  heard  him 
in  America,  as  he  left  upon  the  world,  the  impress  of  his 
supreme  devotion  to  a  supreme  cause.  I  shall  be  grateful  if 
through  these  lectures  any  one  may  be  led  to  recognise  as  supreme 
the  cause  which  Duff  served,  and  to  give  his  life  to  it  with  some 
small  measure  of  Duff's  devotion. 

With  the  venture  of  such  a  prayer  I  asked  the  hearers  of 
these  lectures  and  now  ask  the  reader  to  consider  some  of  the 
problems  of  modern  missions  under  the  general  theme  of  Chris- 
tianity and  the  Nations,  looking  first  at  the  missionary  duty  and 
motives,  secondly  at  the  missionary  aim  and  methods,  thirdly  at 
the  three  great  sets  of  problems  involved  in  the  relations  of  mis- 
sions (1)  to  the  new  national  Churches  which  they  found,  (2) 
to  politics,  and  (3)  to  the  non-Christian  religions,  and  lastly  at 
the  relation  of  the  missionary  movement  to  the  attainment  of  our 
hopes  of  a  united  Church  and  a  united  humanity. 

The  lectures  were  written  on  steamships  while  skirting  the 
coasts  of  South  America  on  a  visit  to  the  mission  work  in  the 

5 


6  PREFACE 

South  American  lands  and  there  was  access  only  to  notes  on 
missionary  books  but  not  to  any  libraries,  and  much  appeal  to 
missionary  biography  which  would  have  been  desirable  was  im- 
possible. I  think,  however,  that  no  opinions  have  been  set  forth 
for  which  there  is  not  ample  support  in  the  judgment  and  expe- 
rience of  some  of  the  great  missionaries  of  whom  the  world 
knows  and  of  many  of  the  missionaries,  equally  great,  of  whom 
the  world  does  not  know. 

The  lectures  were  delivered  in  January  and  February,  1910, 
in  Edinburgh,  Glasgow,  and  Aberdeen,  and  I  am  glad  to  take 
advantage  of  the  opportunity  presented  by  this  preface  to  thank 
the  many  friends  whose  kindness  made  the  duties  of  the  lecture- 
ship an  ever  memorable  delight.  The  limited  time  available  for 
the  delivery  of  each  lecture  required  the  cutting  out  of  a  good 
part  of  the  material,  but  all  that  was  omitted  is  restored  in  the 
printed  form. 

No  claim  of  finality  or  completeness  is  made  for  the  judg- 
ments on  mission  policies  and  methods  which  are  advanced.  The 
work  of  missions  is  a  living  work,  full  of  all  the  perplexities  and 
problems  of  human  life  wrought  upon  by  the  Divine  Life,  and 
we  are  all  only  feeling  our  way  toward  the  great  principles  which 
are  involved  in  it  and  toward  the  formulation  of  these  princi- 
ples in  some  systematic  statement.  If  the  discussion  attempted 
here  leads,  either  through  agreement  or  through  dissent,  to  a 
fuller  and  juster  view  than  has  been  here  proposed,  the  end  of 
the  book  will  have  been  attained.  It  is  the  truth  that  is  sought 
and  not  the  maintenance  of  any  particular  theory  or  opinion. 

R.  E.  S. 


CONTENTS 

I 

PAGE 

The  Missionary  Duty  and  Motives       .         .         .         .17 

The  last  command  of  Christ  not  the  deep  and  final  ground  of 
missionary  duty,  but 

(1)  The  character  of  God;  (2)  The  personality  of 
Christ;  (3)  The  purpose  of  the  Christian  Church; 
(4)  The  need  of  humanity.  And  only  Christianity 
can  meet  these  needs.  It  does  so  by  striking  down  to 
the  individual  and  saving  him. 

But  we  are  told  that  these  motives  are  dead  and  inoperative, 
that  they  cannot  live — (a)  With  the  new  theology,  (b) 
With  "  the  force  of  evolution." 

But  the  missionary  motive  does  not  change: 

It  has  always  been  moral  and  not  merely  eschatological. 

The  fundamental  motive, — but  there  are  others : 

(1)  The  outward  movement  of  civilisation  requires 
the  missionary  enterprise — To  advance  it,  to  support 
it,  to  correct  it;  (2)  The  Church  also  requires  it;  (3) 
The  special  urgencies  of  our  own  day.  The  condition 
of  transition  in  Asia ;  the  need  and  collapse  of  Roman- 
ism in  South  America. 

It  is  objected 

(1)  That  we  ought  not  to  interfere  with  the  religious 
ideas  and  institutions  of  the  non-Christian  people;  (2) 
That  so  much  is  to  be  done  at  home  that  it  is  wrong 


8  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

to  divert  Christian  energies  into  the  work  of  distant 
missions;  (3)  That  the  whole  outward  movement  is 
wrong  and  futile. 
No.     The  outward  movement  is   the  genius  of  the   faith. 
Check  it  and  the  faith  decays,  because  the  faith  is  a  re- 
ligion— a  life  to  be  lived,  a  love  to  be  obeyed. 

II 

The  Missionary  Aim  and  Methods        .         .         .         -57 

The  missionary  enterprise  not  charged  with  the  whole  duty 

of  Christendom  to  the  non-Christian  peoples. 
Its  aim  not  to  be  confused  with  its  results  or  its  methods. 
Its  aim  includes  three  things: 

The  proclamation  of  Christ. 

The  salvation  of  men. 

The  naturalisation  of  Christianity  in  the  non-Christian 
nations. 
The  task  one  of  great  difficulty. 

The  aim  is  not  the  civilisation  or  the  conversion  of  the  world. 
Is  it  "the  evangelisation  of  the  world  in  this  generation?" 
Its  aim  and  the  flexibility  of  its  methods  seen  in  St.  Paul. 
Our  methods : 

1.  The  method  of  incarnation,  but  not  of  asceticism. 

2.  Preaching  Christ. 

3.  Education.    Is  it  legitimate? 

4.  Philanthropy. 
The  problems  which  arise. 
Our  attitude  toward  these. 

Two  different  points  of  view,  and  four  comments  upon  one 
of  them. 


CONTENTS  9 

PAGE 
III 

Missions  and  the  Native  Churches      .         .         .         .113 

The  growth  of  nationalism  in  Asia. 

This  spirit  inevitable  and  desirable  in  politics. 

The  problem  of  nationalism  a  welcome  mission  problem. 

It  is  in  line  with  our  ideal,  but  not  with  the  Roman  ideal. 

It  is  a  problem. 

1.  In  right  ideals  for  the  native  Churches  and  right 

education  of  them  from  the  outset. 

(a)  Self-propagation. 

(b)  Self-support. 

(c)  Self-government. 

2.  In     right     relations     of     missionaries     to     native 
Churches. 

3.  In  the  setting  of  right  moral  standards.    Polygamy. 
Caste. 

4.  In  the  true  impartation  of  a  free  life. 

The  need  of  seeing  clearly  the  principle  on  which  we  work, 
the  need  to  be  supplied,  and  the  difficulty  to  be  met. 

IV 
Missions  and  Politics  .......   177 

The  origin  of  the  political  problem  in  Missions. 

The  political  aspects  of  the  movement  inevitable,  and  com- 
plicating. 

They  come  from  without,  but  also  from  within. 

Christianity  is  a  force  which  affects  all  life. 

And  its  agents  have  been  unable  to  refrain  from  rendering 
political  service. 


io  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Is  this  political   entanglement   consistent   with   the  aim   of 

Missions  ? 
What  are  the  political  rights  and  duties  of  missionaries? 
Have  missionaries  any  political  rights? 
Ought  they  to  have  any  ? 
What  ought  they  to  do  with  their  rights? 
St.  Paul's  course  of  action. 
Three  practical  questions: 

i.  The  question  of  the  exercise  by  missionaries  of  the 
right  of  extra-territoriality. 

2.  The  question  of  the  protection  of  native  converts. 

3.  The  vital  question  of  the  effect  upon  the  purity  and 

vitality  of  the  mission  movement  of  its  confusion 
with  politics.  The  confusion  is  inevitable  and  is 
likely  to  increase.  It  is  dangerous.  It  is  the  con- 
fusion of  an  era  of  construction  in  which  God  is 
working  in  many  ways. 

V 

Christianity  and  the  Non-Christian  Religions    .         .  239 

Christianity's  claims  only  tenable  if  rational. 

Comparison  with  other  religions  unavoidable. 

And  a  fundamental  element  in  missions. 

Essential  conditions  of  a  just  comparison. 

Diverse  views  of  the  non-Christian  religions  and  their  rela- 
tion to  Christianity. 

Results  of  our  comparison  : 

(1)  Men  are  made  for  religion;  (2)  Christianity  has 
all  the  good  of  other  religions ;  (3)  Christianity  is  free 
from  the  evils  of  other   religions ;    (4)    Christianity 


CONTENTS  ii 

contains  indispensable  elements  of  good,  which  all 
other  religions  lack,  (a)  The  conception  of  the  Fa- 
therhood of  God,  (b)  The  discovery  of  the  evil  of  sin 
and  provision  for  its  forgiveness  and  defeat,  (c)  The 
ideal  of  sacrificial  service,  (d)  The  idea  and  principle 
of  resurrection;  (5)  the  non-Christian  religions  are 
inadequate  to  meet  the  world's  needs;  (6)  Chris- 
tianity is  adequate  because  of  its  superior  conception 
of  God,  its  moral  efficiency  and  its  universality. 

Have,  then,  the  non-Christian  religions  prepared  the  way  for 
Christianity? 

What  do  we  conclude  should  be  the  attitude  of  Christianity 
toward  the  non-Christian  religions? 

(1)  It  should  be  consistent;  (2)  It  should  recognise 
joyfully  all  the  good  in  them  and  build  upon  it;  (3) 
It  should  not  slur  over  or  ignore  the  points  of  differ- 
ence ;  (4)  It  should  make  no  compromises,  but  should 
anticipate  its  own  absolute  triumph;  (5)  It  should 
welcome  all  transformations  of  the  thought  of  non- 
Christian  peoples  which  bring  it  nearer  to  Christi- 
anity; (6)  But  it  must  continue  to  seek  to  win  men 
away  from  these  religions  to  Christianity;  (7)  It 
should  perceive  and  hold  fast  the  truth  of  its  own 
uniqueness;  (8)  It  should  welcome  any  contribution 
to  a  fuller  understanding  of  its  own  character,  but  it 
may  exaggerate  the  prospect  of  such  contributions. 

This  view  of  the  non-Christian  religions  and  of  our  attitude 
to  them  is  not  the  Gospel  which  we  are  to  preach.  It  is 
the  ground  of  our  Mission  not  the  substance  of  our 
message. 


12  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

VI 

The  Relation  of  Missions  to  the  Unity  of  the  Church 
and  the  Unity  of  the  World    ......  327 

Considerations  which  indicate  that  Christian  unity  on  the 
foreign  mission  field  is  desirable  and  necessary : 

1.  The  magnitude,  difficulties,  and  urgency  of  the  task 

demand  economy  and  efficiency. 

2.  The  elementary  needs  of  the  peoples  to  be  reached 
call  primarily  for  what  is  essential  alone. 

3.  The  definiteness  of  the  missionary  aim  provides  for 
unity. 

4.  There  is  already  sufficient  intellectual  agreement  in 

the  Evangelical  Churches  of  the  West. 

5.  The  Occidental  character  of  our  divisions  makes 

their  export  unnecessary  and  inexpedient. 
The  kind  of  unity  for  which  these  considerations  call  in- 
volves : 

(1)  The  avoidance  of  all  waste  and  friction;  (2)  A 
positive  co-operation;  (3)  A  real  and  spiritual  unity. 

The  measure  in  which  such  unity  has  been  attained  on  the 
foreign  field — (1)  The  disuse  of  denominational  names; 

(2)  Territorial  divisions  of  the  field;  (3)  Mutual  rec- 
ognition of  ordinances  and  discipline ;  (4)  Union  in 
prayer;  (5)  The  establishment  of  committees  of  con- 
ference and  arbitration;  (6)  Church  federation;  (7) 
Corporate  oneness. 

The  influence  of  missionary  unity  upon  the  unity  of  the 
Church  at  home: 

( 1 )  It  is  showing  the  home  Churches  the  possibility  of 
unity;  (2)  It  is  teaching  them  the  duty  of  unity;  (3) 


CONTENTS  13 

It  is  revealing  to  them  the  method  of  unity,  (a)  It  has 
shown  us  the  uniting  power  of  a  great  work,  (b)  And 
the  power  of  fellowship  in  difference  to  dissolve  the 
difference,  (c)  And  that  the  supreme  method  of  union 
is  not  adaptation  but  transcendence,  (d)  The  principle 
of  nationalism:  its  relation  to  the  problem  of  the  Ro- 
man Church,  and  the  relation  of  missions  through  this 
principle  to  world-unity. 
The  dangers  of  political  nationalism — The  misconstruction 
of  the  nationalistic  principle;   Insolence  of  racial  prej- 
udice. 
The  work  of  missions  in  meeting  these  dangers  and  supply- 
ing the  elements  essential  to  the  unification  of  mankind: 
(i)  The  missionary  construction  of  Christianity  alone 
proclaims  a  hope  and  use  for  every  race;   (2)   The 
missionary  agency  is  an  effective  and  essential  con- 
ciliating influence;   (3)   It  introduces  new  principles 
into  the  non-Christian  nations,   without  which  they 
cannot   fulfil   their  mission   or  be  fitted   for  human 
unity;  (4)  It  presents  the  only  method  of  effecting  the 
unity  of  mankind;  (5)  It  provides  the  adequate  moral 
basis;  (6)  It  embodies  the  supreme  uniting  power. 


I 

THE  MISSIONARY  DUTY  AND   MOTIVES 


THE  MISSIONARY  DUTY  AND  MOTIVES 

THE  last  command  of  Christ  is  not  the  deep  and  final  ground 
of  the  Church's  missionary  duty.  That  duty  is  authorita- 
tively stated  in  the  words  of  the  great  commission,  and  it  is 
of  infinite  consequence  to  have  had  it  so  stated  by  our  Lord  Him- 
self. But  if  these  particular  words  had  never  been  spoken  by  Him, 
or  if,  having  been  spoken,  they  had  not  been  preserved,  the  mission- 
ary duty  of  the  Church  would  not  be  in  the  least  affected.  "  The 
supreme  argument  for  foreign  missions,"  says  an  earnest  mis- 
sionary advocate,  "  is  the  word  of  Jesus  Christ  Himself."  This  is 
correct  but  for  three  words.  The  supreme  argument  for  foreign 
missions  is  not  any  word  of  Christ's, — it  is  Christ  Himself,  and 
what  He  reveals  and  signifies.  The  words  of  Christ  did  not 
create  new  duties.  They  revealed  eternal  duties,  the  grounds 
of  which  lay  back  of  all  words  in  the  nature  of  things  and  in 
the  facts  of  life. 

It  seems  clear  that  the  last  command  of  Christ  played  no  part 
at  all  in  the  first  foreign  missions  of  the  Church.  There  is  no 
reference  to  it  in  Paul's  Epistles.  No  appeal  was  made  to  it 
in  the  issue  over  the  admission  of  Gentiles  to  the  Church.  Medi- 
aeval missions  did  not  find  their  ground  in  it.  It  is  without 
authority  for  many  men  to-day,  because,  while  they  accept  the 
words  as  Christ's  words,  they  do  not  feel  the  domination  of  Christ 
or  of  the  real  grounds  of  missionary  duty.  Those  grounds  are 
in  the  very  being  and  thought  of  God,  in  the  character  of  Chris- 
tianity, in  the  aim  and  purpose  of  the  Christian  Church,  and  in 
the  nature  of  humanity,  its  unity,  and  its  need. 

The  word  of  Christ  as  an  argument  for  foreign  missions  has 
just  as  much  vitality  as  it  draws  from  the  depth  of  our  discern- 

17 


18  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

ment  and  the  power  of  our  acceptance  of  the  considerations 
which  are  the  true  grounds  of  missionary  duty.  "  If  any  of  you 
enter  the  Gospel  ministry  in  this  or  other  lands,"  said  Adoniram 
Judson  in  an  appeal  to  young  men  at  home,  "  let  not  your  object 
be  so  much  to  '  do  your  duty,'  or  even  to  '  save  souls,'  though 
these  should  have  a  place  in  your  motives,  as  to  please  the  Lord 
Jesus.  Let  this  be  your  ruling  motive  in  all  that  you  do.  .  .  . 
Some  one  asked  me  not  long  ago  whether  faith  or  love  influenced 
me  most  in  going  to  the  heathen.  I  thought  of  it  a  while  and 
at  length  concluded  that  there  was  in  me  but  little  of  either. 
But  in  thinking  of  what  did  influence  me,  I  remembered  a  time, 
out  in  the  woods  back  of  Andover  Seminary,  when  I  was  almost 
disheartened.  Everything  looked  dark.  No  one  had  gone  out 
from  this  country.  The  way  was  not  open.  The  field  was  far 
distant  and  in  an  unhealthy  climate.  I  knew  not  what  to  do. 
All  at  once  that  last  command  seemed  to  come  to  my  heart 
directly  from  heaven.  I  could  doubt  no  longer,  but  determined 
on  the  spot  to  obey  it  at  all  hazards,  for  the  sake  of  pleasing 
the  Lord  Jesus  Christ."  But  what  pleased  Christ  was  not  the 
disciple's  conformity  to  an  enactment,  a  statute  of  evangelisation, 
but  the  deep  realisation  of  the  grounds  of  missionary  duty,  which 
enabled  Judson  to  see  what  the  last  command  meant  and  to  lay 
his  life  in  line  with  the  purpose  of  God  in  the  Incarnation. 

It  is  in  the  very  being  and  character  of  God  that  the 
deepest  ground  of  the  missionary  enterprise  is  to  be  found. 
We  cannot  think  of  God  except  in  terms  which  necessitate  the 
missionary  idea.  He  is  one.  There  cannot,  therefore,  be  such 
different  tribal  or  racial  gods  as  are  avowed  in  the  ethnic  re- 
ligions of  the  East,  and  assumed  in  the  ethnic  politics  of  the 
West.  Whatever  God  exists  for  Scotland  exists  for  all  the  world, 
and  none  other  exists.  And  that  cannot  be  true  of  God  in 
Scotland  which  is  not  true  of  Him  also  in  India.  Men  are  not 
free  to  hold  contradictory  conceptions  of  the  same  God.  If 
there  be  any  God  at  all  for  me,  He  must  be  every  other  man's 
God,  too.  And  God  is  true.  To  say  that  He  is  one  is  merely 
to  say  that  He  is.  To  say  that  He  is  true  is  to  begin  to  describe 
Him,  and  to  describe  Him  as  alone  He  can  be.     And  if  He 


THE  MISSIONARY  DUTY  AND  MOTIVES         19 

is  true  He  cannot  have  taught  men  falsehood.  He  will  have 
struggled  with  their  ignorance  in  His  education  of  mankind,  but 
it  cannot  have  been  His  will  or  be  His  will  now  that  some  men 
should  have  false  ideas  of  Him  or  false  attitudes  toward  Him. 
A  true  God  must  will  to  be  truly  known  by  all  men.  And  God 
is  holy  and  pure.  Nothing  unholy  or  impure  can  be  of  Him. 
Anything  unholy  or  impure  must  be  abhorrent  to  Him,  if  in 
religion  the  more  abhorrent  because  the  more  misrepresentative 
of  Him,  the  more  revolting  to  His  nature.  If  anywhere  in  the 
world  religion  covers  what  is  unclean  or  unworthy,  there  the 
character  of  God  is  being  assailed.  And  God  is  just  and  good. 
No  race  and  no  man  can  have  slipped  through  the  fatherly  affec- 
tion of  a  loving  God.  Any  inequality  or  unfairness  or  indiffer- 
ence in  an  offered  God  would  send  us  seeking  for  the  real  one 
whom  we  should  know  was  not  yet  found.  A  God  who  was 
idols  in  China,  fate  in  Arabia,  fetiches  in  Africa,  and  man  him- 
self with  all  his  sin  in  India,  would  be  no  God  anywhere.  If 
God  is  one  man's  father,  He  is  or  would  be  every  man's  father. 
We  cannot  think  of  God,  I  say  it  reverently,  without  thinking 
of  Him  as  a  missionary  God.  Unless  we  are  prepared  to  accept 
a  God  whose  character  carries  with  it  the  missionary  obligation 
and  idea,  we  must  do  without  any  real  God  at  all. 

It  is  by  Christ,  however,  that  the  character  of  God  is  revealed 
to  us.  One  of  His  most  bold  and  penetrating  words  was  His 
declaration,  "  The  day  will  come  when  they  shall  slay  you,  think- 
ing that  they  do  service  unto  God,  and  these  things  will  they  do 
unto  you  because  they  have  not  known  the  Father  or  me."  The 
best  people  of  His  day,  He  declared,  were  ignorant  of  the  true 
character  of  God.  Only  those  truly  knew  it  who  discovered  or 
recognised  it  in  Him.  "  He  that  hath  seen  Me  hath  seen  the 
Father.  No  man  cometh  unto  the  Father  but  by  Me.  No  man 
knoweth  the  Son  save  the  Father,  and  no  man  knoweth  the 
Father  save  the  Son  and  he  to  whomsoever  the  Son  willeth  to 
reveal  Him."  These  are  not  arbitrary  statutes.  They  are  simple 
statements  of  fact.  The  world's  knowledge  of  the  character  of 
God  has  depended  and  depends  now  on  its  knowledge  of  God 
in  Christ.    A  good  and  worthy,  an  adequate  and  satisfying  God, 


20  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

i.e.,  God  in  truth,  is  known  only  where  men  have  been  in  contact 
with  the  message  of  historic  Christianity. 

This  simple  fact  involves  a  sufficient  missionary  responsibility. 
Men  will  only  know  a  good  and  loving  Father  as  their  God, 
i.e.,  they  will  know  God,  only  as  they  are  brought  into  the  knowl- 
edge of  Christ,  Who  is  the  only  revelation  of  God.  For  those 
who  have  this  knowledge  to  withhold  it  from  the  whole  world 
is  to  do  two  things.  It  is  to  condemn  the  world  to  godlessness, 
and  it  is  to  raise  the  suspicion  that  those  who  think  they  have 
the  knowledge  of  God  are  in  reality  ignorant  of  what  Christ 
was  and  what  He  came  to  do.  "  It  is  the  sincere  and  deep 
conviction  of  my  soul,"  said  Phillips  Brooks,  "  when  I  declare 
that  if  the  Christian  faith  does  not  culminate  and  complete  itself 
in  the  effort  to  make  Christ  known  to  all  the  world,  that  faith 
appears  to  me  a  thoroughly  unreal  and  insignificant  thing,  desti- 
tute of  power  for  the  single  life  and  incapable  of  being  con- 
vincingly proved  to  be  true."  And  I  recall  a  remark  of  Principal 
Rainy 's  to  the  effect  that  the  measure  of  our  sense  of  missionary 
duty  was  simply  the  measure  of  our  personal  valuation  of 
Christ.  If  He  is  God  to  us,  all  in  all  to  our  minds  and  souls, 
we  shall  realise  that  He  alone  can  be  this  to  every  man,  and 
that  He  must  be  offered  thus  to  every  other  man.  The  Unitarian 
view  has  never  produced  a  mission  save  under  an  inherited  mo- 
mentum or  the  communicated  stimulus  of  evangelicalism,  and 
it  has  been  incapable  of  sustaining  such  missions  as  it  has  pro- 
duced. But  when  men  really  believe  in  God  in  Christ,  and 
know  Christ  as  God,  they  must,  if  they  are  loyal  to  themselves 
or  to  Him,  share  Him  with  all  mankind. 

For,  child  of  one  race  and  one  time  though  He  was,  and 
that  race  the  most  centripetal  of  all  races,  Christ  thought  and 
wrought  in  universals.  He  looked  forward  over  all  ages  and 
outward  over  all  nations.  The  bread  which  He  would  give  was 
His  flesh,  which  Pie  would  give  for  the  life  of  the  world.  He 
was  the  light  of  the  whole  world.  If  He  should  be  lifted  up 
He  would  draw  all  men  unto  Himself.  His  disciples  were  to 
go  into  all  the  world  and  make  disciples  of  all  nations.  His 
sheep  were  not  of  a  Jewish  fold  alone.     It  was  not  of  a  race 


THE  MISSIONARY  DUTY  AND  MOTIVES  21 

but  of  a  world  that  the  Father  had  sent  Him  to  be  the  Saviour. 
He  did  not  regard  Himself  as  one  of  many  Saviours  and  His 
revelation  as  one  of  many  revealings.  He  was  the  only  Saviour 
of  men,  and  His  was  the  only  revelation  of  the  Father  God. 
"  I  have  long  ago  ceased  to  regard  the  history  of  the  Hebrew 
race  as  unique,"  writes  a  well-known  Christian  leader  of  our 
day.  "  It  was  well  for  us  in  our  early  days  that  our  studies 
were  directed  towards  it,  and  we  saw  how  the  Hebrew  people 
found  God  in  every  event  in  their  history,  but  we  believe  that 
Assyria  and  Babylon,  Nineveh  and  Rome,  could  have  similar 
stories  written  of  God's  dealings  with  them."  Now,  whether 
the  history  of  the  Hebrew  race  is  unique  or  not  is  not  a  matter 
of  theory.  It  is  a  simple  question  of  fact.  If  it  was  not  unique, 
then  where  is  its  like?  What  other  history  produced  a  vocabu- 
lary for  a  revelation?  What  other  history  yielded  God  to  hu- 
manity? What  other  ended  in  a  Saviour?  As  a  simple  matter 
of  fact,  Christianity  which  sprang  out  of  this  race  and  this 
history  is  unlike  all  other  religions  in  its  kind,  as  we  shall  see. 
As  such,  it  never  contemplated  anything  else  than  universal 
dominion.  If  it  shrinks  into  a  more  racial  cult,  it  separates  itself 
from  its  Founder  and  life,  and  utterly  abandons  its  essential 
character. 

Not  only  is  the  missionary  duty  inherent  in  the  nature  of 
Christianity  and  in  the  Christian  conception  of  God,  i.e.,  in  the 
real  character  of  God,  but  it  is  imbedded  in  the  very  purpose  of 
the  Christian  Church.  There  were  no  missionary  organisations 
in  the  early  Church.  No  effort  was  made  to  promote  a  mission- 
ary propaganda,  but  the  religion  spread  at  once  and  everywhere. 
The  genius  of  universal  extension  was  in  the  Church.  "  We  may 
take  it  as  an  assured  fact,"  says  Harnack,  "  that  the  mere  exist- 
ence and  persistent  activity  of  the  individual  Christian  com- 
munities did  more  than  anything  else  to  bring  about  the  exten- 
sion of  the  Christian  religion." 

Bishop  Montgomery  in  his  little  book  on  "  Foreign  Missions  " 
recalls  Archbishop  Benson's  definition  of  four  eras  of  missions, 
"  first,  when  the  whole  Church  acted  as  one ;  next,  when  mis- 
sions were  due  to  great  saints;  thirdly,  to  the  action  of  govern- 


22  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

ments;  lastly,  the  age  of  missionary  societies."  The  Church 
at  the  outset  was  a  missionary  society.  The  new  Christians 
were  drawn  together  spontaneously  by  the  uniting  power  of  a 
common  life,  and  they  felt  as  spontaneously  the  outward  pressure 
of  a  world  mission.  The  triumphant  prosecution  of  that  mission 
and  the  moral  fruits  of  this  new  and  uniting  life  were  their 
apologetics.  They  did  not  sit  down  within  the  walls  of  a  formal- 
ised and  stiffened  institution  to  compose  reasoned  arguments 
for  Christianity.  The  new  religion  would  have  rotted  out  from 
heresy  and  anaemia  in  two  generations  if  they  had  done  so. 

As  an  old  writer  of  the  Church  of  England  has  put  it :  "  The 
way  in  which  the  Gospel  would  seem  to  be  intended  to  be  alike 
preserved  and  perpetuated  on  earth  is  not  by  its  being  jealously 
guarded  by  a  chosen  Order  and  cautiously  communicated  to  a 
precious  Few,  but  by  being  so  widely  scattered  and  so  thickly 
sown  that  it  shall  be  impossible,  from  the  very  extent  of  its 
spreading,  merely,  to  be  rooted  up.  It  was  designed  to  be  not 
as  a  Perpetual  Fire  in  the  Temple,  to  be  tended  with  jealous 
assiduity  and  to  be  fed  only  with  special  oil ;  but  rather  as  a 
shining  and  burning  Light,  to  be  set  up  on  every  hill,  which 
should  blaze  the  broader  and  the  brighter  in  the  breeze,  and 
go  on  so  spreading  over  the  surrounding  territory  as  that  noth- 
ing of  this  world  should  ever  be  able  to  extinguish  or  to  conceal 
it."  The  sound  doctrine  of  the  Church  was  safeguarded  by 
the  wholesome  hygienic  reflex  action  of  service  and  work  and 
conquest.  And  its  light  and  life  convinced  men,  because  men 
saw  them  conquering  the  world.  The  Church  was  established 
to  spread  Christianity,  and  to  conserve  it  in  the  only  way  in 
which  living  things  can  ever  be  conserved,  by  living  action. 
When  in  any  age  or  in  any  land  the  Church  has  forgotten  this, 
she  has  paid  for  her  disobedience.  So  long  as  there  are  any 
unreached  men  in  the  world  or  any  unreached  life,  the  business 
of  the  Church  is  her  missionary  duty. 

And  while  so  long  as  our  present  unhappy  divisions  continue 
among  us  there  may  be  diversities  of  tasks  among  various  bodies 
of  Christians,  nevertheless  that  is  true  of  each  body  which 
is  true  of  all.     Its  main  business  can  never  be  to  guard.     It 


THE  MISSIONARY  DUTY  AND  MOTIVES  23 

must  be  to  give.  Each  Church  must  recognise  the  missionary 
duty  as  its  duty  as  a  Church,  and  its  primary  duty,  if  it  would 
be  true  to  the  fundamental  purpose  of  the  Church  in  the  world. 
The  Church  of  Scotland  was  the  first  great  Church  in  modern 
times  to  rediscover  this  principle.  In  1796  two  Synods  of  the 
Established  Church  overtured  the  Assembly  regarding  foreign 
missions,  proposing  a  collection.  The  proposition  was  violently 
opposed.  Even  moderatism  can  be  violent.  It  was  argued  that 
"  to  spread  abroad  the  knowledge  of  the  Gospel  amongst  bar- 
barous and  heathen  nations  seems  to  be  highly  preposterous,  in 
so  far  as  philosophy  and  learning  must  in  the  nature  of  things 
take  the  precedence,  and  that  while  there  remains  at  home  a 
single  individual  without  means  of  religious  knowledge,  to  propa- 
gate it  abroad  would  be  improper  and  absurd."  A  collection 
for  missions,  it  was  contended,  "  would  no  doubt  be  a  subject 
for  legal  prosecution."  Thanks  to  Chalmers  and  Inglis,  the 
day  came  when  the  Church  of  Scotland  came  to  the  truth  and 
became  "  the  first  Protestant  Church  as  such  to  send  out  a 
missionary."  In  1831,  Dr.  Rice  presented  in  the  General  As- 
sembly of  the  Presbyterian  Church  in  the  United  States  of 
America  his  famous  overture  whose  principle,  six  years  later, 
was  permanently  embodied  in  the  constitution  of  the  Church. 

The  Presbyterian  Church  in  the  United  States  of  North 
America  [declared  Dr.  Rice  in  his  overture]  in  organising 
their  form  of  government,  and  in  repeated  declarations  made 
through  their  representatives  in  after  times,  have  solemnly  recog- 
nised the  importance  of  the  missionary  cause  and  their  obligation 
as  Christians  to  promote  it  by  all  the  means  in  their  power. 
But  these  various  acknowledgments  have  not  gone  to  the  full 
extent  of  the  obligations  imposed  by  the  Head  of  the  Church, 
nor  have  they  produced  exertions  at  all  corresponding  thereto. 
Indeed,  in  the  judgment  of  the  General  Assembly,  the  primary 
and  principal  object  of  the  institution  of  the  Church  by  Jesus 
Christ,  was  not  so  much  the  salvation  of  the  individual  Christian, 
for  "  he  that  believeth  in  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  shall  be  saved," — 
but  the  communicating  the  blessings  of  the  Gospel  to  the  destitute 
with  the  efficiency  of  united  efforts.  The  entire  history  of  the 
Christian  Societies  organised  by  the  Apostles  affords  abundant 
evidence   that   they   so   understood   the   design  of   the   Master. 


24  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

They  received  of  Him  a  command  to  preach  the  Gospel  to  every 
creature,  and  from  the  churches  planted  by  them  the  word  of 
the  Lord  was  "  sounded  out "  through  all  parts  of  the  civilised 
world.  Nor  did  the  missionary  spirit  of  the  primitive  churches 
expire  until  they  had  become  secularised  and  corrupted  by 
another  spirit.  And  it  is  the  decided  belief  of  the  General  As- 
sembly that  a  true  revival  of  religion  in  any  denomination  of 
Christians  will  generally,  if  not  universally,  be  marked  by  an 
increased  sense  of  obligation  to  execute  the  commission  which 
Christ  gave  the  Apostles.  The  General  Assembly  would,  there- 
fore, in  the  most  public  and  solemn  manner,  express  their  shame 
and  sorrow  that  the  Church  represented  by  them  has  done  com- 
paratively so  little  to  make  known  the  saving  health  of  the  Gospel 
to  all  nations.  .  .  .  Be  it  therefore,  Resolved,  that  the  Presby- 
terian Church  in  the  United  States  is  a  Missionary  Society, 
the  object  of  which  is  to  aid  in  the  conversion  of  the  world ; 
and  that  every  member  is  a  member  for  life  of  said  society, 
and  bound  in  maintenance  of  his  Christian  character  to  do  all 
in  his  power  for  the  accomplishment  of  this  object. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  nine-tenths  of  the  loyalty  to  the  mis- 
sionary purpose  of  the  Church  is  shown  by  one-tenth  of  the 
membership,  but  the  Church  none  the  less  is  a  missionary  or- 
ganisation, and  the  missionary  organisation  and  the  missionary 
duty  are  grounded  in  her  charter  and  character. 

The  fourth  deep  ground  of  missionary  duty  is  the  need  of 
humanity.  The  world  needs  Christ  to-day  as  much  and  as  truly 
as  it  needed  Him  nineteen  centuries  ago.  If  Judaism  and  the 
Roman  Empire  needed  what  Christ  brought,  then  Hinduism 
and  Asia  need  it  now.  If  they  do  not  need  Him  now,  no  more 
was  He  needed  then.  If  they  can  get  along  without  Him  just 
as  well,  the  whole  world  can  dispense  with  Him.  If  there  is 
no  missionary  duty,  the  ground  falls  from  under  the  necessity, 
and  therefore  from  under  the  reality  of  the  Incarnation.  But 
that  world  into  which  He  came  did  need  Christ.  It  was  dead 
without  Him.  It  was  He  Who  gave  it  life,  Who  cleansed  its 
defilement,  Who  taught  it  purity  and  service  and  equality  and 
faith  and  gave  it  hope  and  fellowship.  He  alone  can  do  this 
now.  The  non-Christian  world  needs  now  what  Christ  and 
Christ  alone  can  do  for  it. 


THE  MISSIONARY  DUTY  AND  MOTIVES  25 

It  needs  the  physical  wholeness,  the  fitting  of  life  to  its 
conditions,  which,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  nations  get  just  in  pro- 
portion as  they  get  Christ.  We  do  not  need  to  go  for  proof 
of  such  needs  to  any  overcoloured,  distorted  accounts  of  those 
who  see  only  the  good  of  Christendom  and  only  the  evil  of 
heathenism — heathenism  is  a  good  word,  and  it  describes  facts. 
Sir  John  Hewett's  account,  as  Lieutenant-Governor,  of  the  con- 
ditions of  sanitation  in  the  United  Provinces  of  India,  will  suffice : 
"  Speaking  generally,  the  death  rates  recorded  in  the  Province 
in  recent  years,  both  in  urban  and  in  rural  tracts,  are  nearly 
three  times  as  high  as  in  England  and  Wales.  It  is  estimated 
that  in  India  nearly  one  out  of  every  ten  of  the  population  is 
constantly  sick,  and  a  person  who  has  escaped  the  diseases  and 
dangers  of  childhood  and  youth,  and  entered  into  manhood  or 
womanhood,  has  an  expectation  that  his  or  her  life  will  extend 
to  only  68  per  cent,  of  the  time  that  a  person  similarly  situated 
may  be  expected  to  live  in  England.  .  .  .  Infantile  mortality 
is  nearly  twice  as  great  as  it  is  in  England.  .  .  .  It  is  lamentable 
that  one  out  of  every  four  children  born  should  die  before  he 
or  she  has  completed  a  year  of  life.  .  .  .  The  average  number 
of  persons  per  house  (which  frequently  consist  of  two  rooms, 
or  even  of  only  one)  is  5.3  in  important  cities,  and  5.5  in  the 
rest  of  the  country.  It  is  estimated  that  the  average  superficial 
area  per  head  of  the  population  is  something  like  10  square  feet, 
and  the  breathing  space — 150  cubic  feet — just  half  what  is  re- 
quired in  common  lodging-houses  in  England."  Conditions  in 
Christian  lands  are  not  what  they  should  be,  but  they  are  in- 
finitely superior  to  the  conditions  in  other  lands,  and  in  pro- 
portion as  they  are  Christian,  famine  and  disease  and  want  are 
overcome.     Are  these  blessings  to  be  ours  alone? 

The  world  needs  the  social  message  and  redemption  of  Chris- 
tianity. Paul  tells  us  that  it  met  and  conquered  the  inequalities 
of  his  time,  the  chasm  between  citizen  and  foreigner,  master  and 
slave,  man  and  woman.  These  are  the  chasms  of  the  non- 
Christian  world  still.  It  has  no  ideal  of  human  brotherhood 
save  as  it  has  heard  of  it  through  Christianity.  Not  one  of  the 
non-Christian  religions  or  civilisations  has  given  either  women 


26  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

or  children,  especially  girl  children,  their  rights.  There  is  human 
affection.  The  statement  of  a  recent  writer  regarding  China, 
that  "  children  are  spawned  and  not  born,"  is  surely  most  un- 
true save  on  the  basest  levels  of  life.  But  the  proverb  of  the 
Arab  women  of  Kesrawan  too  truly  suggests  the  Asiatic  point 
of  view :  "  The  threshold  weeps  forty  days  when  a  girl  is  born." 
And  between  man  and  man  the  world  knows  no  deep  basis  of 
common  humanity,  or  if  it  knows,  it  has  no  adequate  sanction 
and  resources  for  its  realisation.  Its  brotherhood  is  within  the 
faith  or  within  the  caste,  not  as  inclusive  as  humanity.  It  wants 
what  all  the  world  wanted  until  it  found  it  through  Christ. 
"  In  his  little  churches,  where  each  person  bore  his  neighbour's 
burden,  Paul's  spirit,"  says  Harnack,  "  already  saw  the  dawning 
of  a  new  humanity,  and  in  the  Epistle  to  the  Ephesians  he  has 
voiced  this  feeling  with  a  thrill  of  exaltation.  Far  in  the  back- 
ground of  these  churches,  like  some  unsubstantial  semblance, 
lay  the  division  between  Jew  and  Gentile,  Greek  and  Barbarian, 
great  and  small,  rich  and  poor.  For  a  new  humanity  had  now 
appeared,  and  the  Apostle  viewed  it  as  Christ's  body,  in  which 
every  member  served  the  rest  and  each  was  indispensable  in 
his  own  place."  The  great  social  idea  of  Christianity  is  still 
only  partially  realised  by  us.  But  we  do  not  have  it  at  all  unless 
we  have  it  for  humanity,  and  it  can  be  made  to  prevail  anywhere 
only  by  being  made  to  prevail  everywhere. 

The  world  needs,  moreover,  the  moral  ideal  and  the  moral 
power  of  Christianity.  The  Christian  conceptions  of  truth  and 
purity  and  love  and  holiness  and  service  are  original.  Every 
ideal  except  the  Christian  ideal  is  defective.  Three  other  sets 
of  ideals  are  offered  to  men.  The  only  other  theistic  ideals  are 
the  Mohammedan  and  the  Jewish.  The  Mohammedan  ideal  ex- 
pressly sanctions  polygamy,  and  the  authority  of  its  founder  is 
cited  in  justification  of  falsehood.  The  Jewish  ideal  is  wholly 
enclosed  in  and  transcended  by  the  Christian.  Buddhism  and 
Shintoism  and  Confucianism  offer  men  atheistic  ideals,  i.e.,  ideals 
which  abandon  the  conception  of  the  absolute  and  cannot  rise 
above  their  source  in  man  who  made  them.  Hinduism,  with 
its  pantheism,  is  incapable  of  the  moral  distinctions  which  alone 


THE  MISSIONARY  DUTY  AND  MOTIVES  27 

can  produce  moral  ideals,  and  as  a  matter  of  fact  owes  its 
worthy  moral  conceptions  to-day  exclusively  to  the  influence  of 
Christianity.  But  it  is  not  ideals  alone, — it  is  power  for  their 
realisation  that  the  world  requires.  That  power  can  be  found 
only  in  life,  in  the  life  of  God  communicated  to  men.  What 
offers  this  or  pretends  to  offer  it  but  Christianity?  How  can 
it  be  offered  by  religions  which  have  no  God,  or  whose  God  has 
no  character? 

For  this  is  the  great  need  of  the  world.  It  needs  the  knowl- 
edge and  the  life  of  the  good  and  fatherly  God.  Its  own  religions 
have  given  it  neither  of  these,  and  its  own  religions  are  dis- 
integrating. Christianity  has  detached  small  companies  of  people 
from  them,  but  the  influence  of  Christianity  has  penetrated  them 
to  the  marrow.  Let  alone,  it  would  war  against  their  vicious 
elements  and  preserve  all  in  them  capable  of  redemption.  But 
it  will  not  be  let  alone.  Other  influences  are  at  work  upon  the 
religious  conceptions  of  the  non-Christian  world,  and  under  those 
influences  the  conceptions  and  the  institutions  of  the  non-Chris- 
tian religions  are  doomed.  Never  did  men  face  a  more  solemn 
responsibility  than  confronts  us  now.  "  The  ancient  beliefs  and 
customs  of  the  non-Christian  peoples,"  says  Mr.  Bryce  in  a 
recent  letter,  "  are  destined  soon  to  pass  away,  and  it  becomes 
a  matter  of  supreme  importance  to  see  that  new  and  better  moral 
and  religious  principles  are  given  to  them  promptly  to  replace 
what  is  disappearing;  and  to  endeavour  to  find  methods  for 
preventing  the  faults  or  vices  of  adventurers  and  others  who 
are  trying  to  exploit  the  uncivilised  races  from  becoming  a  fatal 
hindrance  to  the  spread  of  Christianity."  The  Christian  nations 
are  standing  face  to  face  with  judgment  here.  The  Bishop  of 
Lahore  put  this  earnestly  in  a  Ramsden  sermon  at  Cambridge 
University  many  years  ago.  "  And  is  it  too  much  to  say,"  he 
enquired,  "  that  our  greatest  national  glory  or  our  deepest  na- 
tional shame  will,  in  the  eye  of  history,  turn  in  the  way  in  which 
we  recognise  our  responsibility  and  discharge  our  obligations  to 
the  land  [of  India]  more,  perhaps,  than  any  other  single  aspect 
of  our  national  life?  That  our  contact  with  India  must,  whether 
we  will  it  or  not,  be  fraught  with  issues  of  the  most  momentous 


28  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

importance  to  that  land,  is  patent  to  every  one  who  is  the  least 
acquainted  with  the  conditions  of  life  there.  Even  putting  all 
distinctive  missionary  effort  out  of  the  question,  the  mere  con- 
tact of  Western  thought  and  culture  and  education  is  inevitably 
breaking  up  the  older  forms  of  Hindu  thought.  But  it  lies  with 
us  whether  that  contact  shall  be  charged  with  infinite  blessing, 
leading  them  on  to  a  higher,  deeper,  truer  faith,  and  a  new 
national  life,  or  whether,  cutting  them  adrift  from  their  old 
moorings,  we  leave  them  without  Christ,  strangers  from  the 
covenants  of  promise,  having  no  hope  and  without  God  in  the 
world.  But  if,  indeed,  this  is  the  return  that  we  make  them, 
if,  after  holding  the  land  for  our  own  benefit  and  skimming 
it  of  its  choicest  productions  and  pouring  into  it  as  a  happy 
solution  of  difficulties  at  home,  in  ever-increasing  streams,  our 
sons  as  civilians,  soldiers,  engineers,  professional  men,  men  of 
business,  artisans,  mechanics,  and  the  like,  we  express  our  in- 
ability or  our  unwillingnes  to  satisfy  its  hope  and  need,  to 
minister  to  its  sore  sickness,  how  think  you  will  this  stand  in 
the  eyes  of  a  righteous  God  Who  loveth  righteousness,  Whose 
countenance  will  behold  the  thing  that  is  just?"  Yes,  how  are 
we  to  think  that  He  will  regard  such  paltering  with  manifest 
missionary  duty? 

And  throughout  the  non-Christian  world  there  are  multitudes 
who  are  conscious  of  their  needs.  They  may  not  regard  Chris- 
tianity as  the  answer  to  their  need.  It  is  not  surprising  if 
they  do  not.  In  what  way  has  Christendom  not  misrepresented 
Christianity  to  them  ?  But  they  know  their  need.  "  You  speak 
as  if  our  country  is  already  a  dead  thing,"  says  one  of  the 
characters  in  Uchimura's  dialogue  on  "  The  Future  of  Japan." 
"  Yes,"  is  the  reply,  "  immoral  nation  is  already  dead.  With  all 
its  shows  of  stability,  a  nation  without  a  high  ideal  is  a  dead 
corpse.  Japan  under  the  Satsuma  Choshu  Government  is  a 
dead  nation."  "  You  speak  very  determinedly."  "  Yes,"  replies 
Uchimura,  "  I  have  to ;  I  cannot  bear  to  see  my  nation  die." 
And  there  are  many  who  do  not  wish  to  see  their  nations  die 
in  Asia,  who  turn  to  Christ.  "  All  over  India,"  wrote  Dr.  Cuth- 
bert  Hall  to  the  missionaries  there  when  he  left  India,  with 


THE  MISSIONARY  DUTY  AND  MOTIVES  29 

India's  need  upon  his  heart  and  its  poison  in  his  blood,  "  all 
over  India  are  men  unprepared  to  identify  themselves  with  any- 
Christian  denomination,  to  whom  the  popular  forms  of  the  an- 
cient faith  have  become  inadequate,  if  not  distasteful,  and  for 
whom  the  name  of  Jesus  Christ  and  the  distinctive  truths  con- 
nected with  that  name  for  the  redemption  of  individuals  and 
the  reconstruction  of  the  social  order,  are  taking  on  new  at- 
tractiveness and  value."  The  fact  that  the  world  is  awaking 
to  its  need,  whether  it  is  drawn  or  repelled  by  Christianity  as 
it  understands  it  matters  not,  adds  a  pathos  to  its  mute  appeal 
to  those  who  have  in  custody  the  Gospel  of  God  in  Christ. 

For  it  is  only  that  Gospel  that  can  meet  the  world's  need. 
Commerce  and  government,  philanthropy  and  education,  deal 
with  it  superficially,  and  in  the  hands  of  shallow  or  evil  men 
only  accentuate  it.  A  force  is  needed  which  will  cut  down  to 
the  roots,  which  deals  with  life  in  the  name  and  by  the  power 
of  God,  which  marches  straight  upon  the  soul  and  reconstructs 
character,  which  saves  men  one  by  one.  Here  we  are  flat  upon 
the  issue,  and  not  to  evade  it  or  confuse  it,  I  will  put  it  un- 
mistakably. It  is  our  duty  to  carry  Christianity  to  the  world 
because  the  world  needs  to  be  saved,  and  Christ  alone  can  save 
it.  The  world  needs  to  be  saved  from  want  and  disease  and 
injustice  and  inequality  and  impurity  and  lust  and  hopelessness 
and  fear,  because  individual  men  need  to  be  saved  from  sin 
and  death,  and  only  Christ  can  save  them.  His  is  the  only 
religious  power  which  will  reach  down  deep  enough  to  transform, 
and  will  hold  till  transformation  is  fixed.  Christianity  alone  is 
the  religion  which  will  do  this  and  will  struggle  until  it  has  pre- 
vailed. The  American  Consul-General  at  Hong  Kong,  Mr.  Wil- 
der, understands  this :  "  Commerce,  exploitation  of  resources, 
diplomacy,  personal  contact,  secular  education  even,  have  had 
their  way ;  they  are  handmaids  of  truth,  but  they  do  not  do  the 
work.  The  Anglo-Saxon  has  rubbed  against  the  Chinese  for  a 
century  in  South  China,  yet  the  crudest  forms  of  superstition 
abound  in  almost  every  native  home;  tawdry  dragons  are  carried 
about  the  streets  to  expel  the  plague;  polygamy  and  slavery  are 
common,  and  one  may  only  infer  the  dark  scenes  that  must  be 


3o  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

enacted  under  a  system  whose  heaven  can  be  bought  or  whose 
hell  can  be  averted  by  burning  coloured  sawdust  and  vain  repeti- 
tions. You  say  that  our  American-European  phases  of  these 
coast  ports  are  no  less  abhorrent.  We  deny  it  absolutely.  We 
confess  the  sorry  showing,  but  we  point  out  the  constant  protest, 
the  disgrace  attached  to  it,  the  periodic  war  on  it;  the  promise 
from  the  operation  of  Christian  resistance  and  uplift  elsewhere 
of  better  days  to  come  in  the  Far  East.  There  is  this  all-im- 
portant difference :  pagan  vice  and  ignorance  are  a  dead  incubus, 
with  no  hope  from  within.  Paganism,  unaided,  never  improves. 
In  a  Christian  community  where  you  find  vice  and  degradation 
there  is  no  peace,  there  is  recurring  protest;  some  one  is  forever 
carrying  forward  the  standard  and  bidding  the  line  to  come  up : 
if  one  generation  does  not  relieve  the  iniquity,  better  men  and 
women  to  follow  us  force  the  improvement." 

And  Christianity  does  this  by  striking  down  to  the  individual 
and  saving  him.  It  saves  him  by  the  power  of  God  in  Christ, 
working  in  and  upon  him.  The  missionary  duty  is  this  duty. 
"  I  hold  education,"  says  Uchimura,  "  as  essentially  personal 
and  individualistic."  And  he  uses  the  term  education  in  its 
broad  sense.  There  is  more  to  education  than  this.  Society  is 
something  more  than  the  sum-total  of  individuals,  but  it  begins 
and  ends  with  individuals,  and  the  need  of  the  world  is  primarily 
the  need  of  its  individuals,  and  the  salvation  of  the  world  the 
salvation  of  its  soul  through  the  salvation  of  its  souls.  The 
world's  need,  and  the  full  supply  of  that  need  in  Christianity, 
is  the  basis  of  missionary  duty  and  the  perception  of  the  need, 
the  knowledge  that  Christ  can  supply  it  and  the  spirit  of  sym- 
pathy and  fairness  which  any  true  knowledge  of  Christ  will 
give,  are  the  fountains  of  the  missionary  motive. 

We  have  been  often  told  in  recent  years  that  the  atmosphere 
in  which  the  modern  missionary  movement  was  conceived  has 
passed  away  and  that  the  movement  cannot  live  in  the  new  days 
that  have  come.  New  theological  ideas  and  new  principles  of 
human  progress,  it  is  said,  have  cut  the  foundation  from  beneath 
the  missionary  duty.  What  are  the  new  theological  ideas  which 
have  done  this?     They   resolve  themselves,   the  new   teachers 


THE  MISSIONARY  DUTY  AND  MOTIVES  31 

tell  us,  into  the  idea  of  God  as  the  loving  God  and  Father  of 
all  mankind,  Who  loves  all  equally  and  is  equally  teaching  all 
and  leading  them  to  Himself.  But  when  did  this  idea  become 
new  ?  Paul  held  it.  It  was  this  very  conception  which  led  the 
founders  of  foreign  missions  to  go  out  to  the  nations  which  had 
no  such  notion  of  God,  in  order  to  make  clear  to  them  Him 
after  Whom  they  had  been  ignorantly  feeling.  If  modern  the- 
ology boasts  of  a  better  God  than  the  founders  of  missions 
knew,  and  shows  itself  less  zealous  to  share  its  better  God  with 
all  the  world,  we  will  be  forced  to  regard  its  better  God  as  a 
delusion.  How  good  a  man's  God  really  is  will  be  shown  by 
the  man's  eagerness  to  make  Him  known  to  all  the  world.  If 
new  theological  conceptions  do  not  lead  men  to  do  this,  they 
will  have  no  power  in  them,  and  no  long-continuing  life.  The- 
ology without  a  missionary  spirit  only  appears  to  deal  with  a 
good  God,  and  to  believe  in  Him.  The  men  who  really  believe 
in  a  good  God  will  continue  the  passionate  effort  to  give  Him 
to  all  men  and  all  men  to  Him.  And  what  are  the  new  prin- 
ciples of  human  progress  which  have  dissolved  the  missionary 
motive?  The  force  of  evolution,  we  are  told,  by  which  all  people 
are  being  developed  toward  the  sure  goal.  But  evolution  is  no 
force.  It  is  simply  the  commonplace  method  of  action  by  which 
results  have  always  been  wrought  everywhere.  You  get  out 
of  causes  only  what  is  in  them,  and  there  is  in  the  world's  need, 
its  moral  and  spiritual  destitution,  no  power  of  self-fulfilment. 
We  believe  that  the  nations  and  the  souls  of  men  will  move 
upward  and  forward  towards  a  worthy  end  only  if  living  forces 
capable  of  lifting  them  toward  such  an  end  are  set  to  work 
upon  them.  The  new  day  discerns  this,  and  the  missionary 
motive  will  not  only  survive  into  the  new  day, — it  will  be  more 
powerful  then  than  ever  in  the  past. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  missionary  motive  does  not  change. 
The  enterprise  rests  now  on  the  same  foundation  on  which  it 
has  always  rested, — on  which  it  rested  at  the  beginning.  Our 
Lord  came  to  give  men  life  abundantly,  to  save  them  from  their 
sins,  to  show  them  the  Father,  to  be  the  Saviour  of  the  World. 
The  disciples  went  out  to  give  to  others  what  had  meant  every- 


32  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

thing  to  them,  to  proclaim  a  kingdom  which  was  the  true  prin- 
ciple of  life,  to  deliver  men  from  darkness  to  light  and  from 
the  power  of  Satan  unto  God,  to  give  them  freedom  from  their 
sins,  to  tell  them  good  news,  to  bring  them  unto  God,  and  to 
bring  to  them  the  love  and  strength  and  forgiveness  of  God  in 
Christ.  A  great  love  and  sense  of  human  brotherhood,  of  the 
oneness  of  humanity  in  its  need,  and  the  oneness  of  its  hope 
and  privilege  in  God,  filled  the  hearts  of  the  disciples  with  a 
compassion  which  was  and  is  the  essence  of  the  missionary- 
spirit. 

These  have  been  the  motives  which  have  led  the  missionaries 
out  in  all  ages.  Adolphus  Good  wrote  that  his  reasons  for  going 
to  Africa  were  "  just  about  those  that  would  suggest  themselves 
to  any  one.  The  Gospel  is  here  within  the  reach  of  all,  and  many 
of  the  temporal  benefits,  at  least,  are  enjoyed  by  all.  The 
heathen  have  neither.  This,  I  think,  makes  it  the  duty,  especially 
of  every  young  minister,  to  enquire  not,  'Why  should  I  go?' 
but  '  Why  should  I  not  go  ? '  "  M.  Berthoud  chose  Africa  under 
a  sense  of  the  obligation  resting  upon  Christians  to  atone  to 
Africa  for  the  wrongs  of  slavery.  "  It  is  the  Gospel,"  he  said, 
"  which  has  begun  to  make  amends,  and  it  is  the  Gospel  which 
will  certainly  complete  the  work.  The  Gospel  will  yet  make 
Africa  one  of  the  most  beautiful  territories  of  the  Kingdom  of 
God.  .  .  .  What  a  privilege  to  be  called  to  labour  in  this  great 
undertaking !  "  I  have  chosen  two  missionaries,  not  among  the 
best  known,  who  justly  represent  the  motives  which  have  actually 
sustained  the  missionary  enterprise,  although  these  two  need  to 
be  supplemented  by  a  third,  whose  words  add  the  deeper  element 
of  loving  devotion.  "  I  see,"  said  Raymond  Lull,  "  many  knights 
going  to  the  Holy  Land  beyond  the  seas,  but  in  the  end  all  are 
destroyed  before  they  attain  that  which  they  think  to  have. 
Whence  it  seems  to  me,  that  the  conquest  of  the  Holy  Land 
ought  not  to  be  attempted  except  in  the  way  in  which  Thou 
and  Thy  apostles  acquired  it,  namely,  by  love  and  prayers,  and 
the  pouring  out  of  tears  and  blood." 

The  idea  that  the  supreme  missionary  motive  has  been  the 
desire  to  save  the  souls  of  the  heathen  from  hell  rests  upon  a 


THE  MISSIONARY  DUTY  AND  MOTIVES  33 

very  partial  and  inaccurate  knowledge  of  missionary  literature. 
That  idea  has  entered  deeply  into  men's  thoughts  and  it  repre- 
sents a  great  and  solemn  truth,  but  in  the  crude  form  in  which 
it  is  flung  reproachfully  at  the  missionary  movement  it  has  never 
constituted  the  foundation  of  the  missionary  enterprise.  The 
Epistles  of  Paul  know  nothing  of  it.  He  never  once  uses  the 
word  hell.  He  is  so  engrossed  in  living  issues  that  he  says  little 
about  destinies.  He  saw  men  dead  without  Christ,  and  he  was 
more  concerned  with  bringing  them  life  than  with  speculation 
as  to  the  issue  of  their  death.  There  has  always  been  far  more 
speculation  on  the  future  fate  of  the  heathen  among  stay-at- 
homes  than  among  missionaries. 

The  future  destiny  of  any  man  is  not  a  thing  to  trifle  over. 
The  New  Testament  certainly  does  not  deal  lightly  with  it.  We 
have  no  slightest  ground  for  diluting  the  solemn  significance  of 
man's  present  life  as  determining  the  future,  as  an  integral  and 
ordering  part  of  the  man's  eternal  career.  On  the  other  hand, 
we  know  that  men  are  not  to  be  judged  as  though  all  had  seen 
the  same  light.  No  man  is  lost  for  not  accepting  a  Saviour  of 
whom  he  has  never  heard.  Men  are  lost  because  sin  destroys 
them,  and  they  are  lost  now  because  sin  is  now  alienating  them 
from  God  and  blinding  them  to  light.  What  we  have  to  deal 
with  is  not  destinies  but  facts.  Salvation  is  salvation  from  a 
destiny  only  because  it  is  salvation  from  the  fact  of  sin.  As 
by  the  Lamb  slain  from  the  foundation  of  the  world,  God  saved 
men  before  Christ  came,  so  now  He  is  dealing  with  men 
in  the  nations  which  are  still  B.  C.  But  this  absolves  us  from 
no  missionary  duty,  for  first,  we  know  these  nations  and  we  see 
there  no  salvation  such  as  the  Lamb  made  flesh  has  wrought, 
and  secondly,  we  do  see  there  such  sickness  of  society  and  of 
the  soul  as  only  Christ  can  heal.  We  think  with  awe  of  the 
future,  and  that  awe  is  the  background  of  our  missionary  medi- 
tation, but  our  duty  is  the  duty  of  carrying  a  present  deliverance 
and  revealing  to  men  a  present  Father  of  Love  and  a  present 
Saviour  of  Power. 

This  and  not  the  eschatological  consideration  has  been  the 
real  missionary  motive  in  all  ages.    Even  when  the  eschatological 


34  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

consideration  was  given  bold  and  conspicuous  utterance,  it  was 
a  mode  of  speech  to  express  what  Paul  also  felt  and  we  feel, 
and  what  Paul  also  expressed  and  we  express  with  a  different 
emphasis.  It  was  a  way  of  describing  human  need,  but  it  was 
the  need,  howsoever  described,  and  living  faith  in  Christ  and 
His  Gospel  as  alone  able  to  meet  that  need  that  has  ever  con- 
stituted the  ground  and  motive  of  missions.  Indeed,  if  we  go 
back  to  the  appeals  of  the  great  leaders  of  the  missionary  enter- 
prise at  the  beginning  of  the  modern  movement,  we  shall  find 
their  emphasis  often  less  appreciative  of  the  individualistic  and 
distinctively  religious  character  of  the  enterprise,  and  more  social 
and  political  than  our  own.  "  Can  we  as  men  or  as  Christians," 
asks  Carey  in  his  famous  "  Enquiry  into  the  Obligations  of 
Christians  to  Use  Means  for  the  Conversion  of  the  Heathen," 
"  hear  that  a  great  part  of  our  fellow-creatures,  whose  souls  are 
as  immortal  as  ours,  and  who  are  as  capable  as  ourselves  of 
adorning  the  Gospel  and  contributing  by  their  preaching,  writ- 
ings, or  practices  to  the  glory  of  our  Redeemer's  name  and  the 
good  of  His  Church,  are  enveloped  in  ignorance  and  barbarism? 
Can  we  hear  that  they  are  without  the  Gospel,  without  govern- 
ment, without  laws,  and  without  arts  and  sciences,  and  not  exert 
ourselves  to  introduce  among  them  the  sentiments  of  men,  and 
of  Christians?  Would  not  the  spread  of  the  Gospel  be  the  most 
effectual  means  of  their  civilisation  ?  Would  not  that  make  them 
useful  members  of  society?"  This  was  the  characteristic  note 
of  the  argument  advanced  at  the  beginning  of  the  modern  mis- 
sionary enterprise.  In  America  two  of  the  greatest  of  the  early 
leaders  were  Jeremiah  Evarts  and  Walter  Lowrie,  both  of  them 
public  men  who  gave  up  law  and  politics  to  serve  the  cause  of 
missions.  In  an  address  to  the  Christian  public,  issued  in  1812, 
Evarts  wrote :  "  It  is  now  generally  seen  and  felt  by  those  who 
have  any  claim  to  be  considered  as  proper  judges,  that  Chris- 
tianity is  the  only  remedy  for  the  disorders  and  miseries  of  the 
world,  as  well  as  the  only  foundation  of  hope  for  the  world  to 
come.  No  other  agent  will  ever  control  the  violent  passions  of 
men,  and  without  the  true  religion  all  attempts  to  meliorate  the 
conditions  of  mankind  will  prove  as  illusory  as  a  feverish  dream. 


THE  MISSIONARY  DUTY  AND  MOTIVES         35 

The  genuine  patriot,  therefore,  and  the  genuine  philanthropist, 
must  labour,  so  far  as  they  value  the  prosperity  of  their  country 
and  the  happiness  of  the  human  race,  to  diffuse  the  knowledge 
and  the  influence  of  Christianity  at  home  and  abroad.  Thus  will 
they  labour  most  effectually  to  put  a  final  period  to  oppression 
and  slavery,  to  perfidy  and  war,  and  to  all  the  train  of  evils 
which  falsehood,  ambition,  and  cruelty  have  so  profusely  scat- 
tered through  the  world."  Lowrie  was  ever  writing  and  speak- 
ing in  the  same  vein.  We  find  in  the  early  missionary  writings 
a  preponderant  appeal  to  the  moral  need  of  the  world.  It  needs 
a  spiritual  regeneration  now.  It  needs  the  establishment  of 
Christian  institutions  now.  The  charge  of  a  narrow  eschato- 
logical  appeal  never  did  hold  against  the  missionary  movement. 
An  adequate  knowledge  of  missionary  literature  would  lay  it 
open  rather,  I  think,  to  the  error  of  over-moralising  and  over- 
socialising  the  missionary  duty.  Neither  in  missions  nor  in  life 
have  we  lived  enough  under  the  shadow  of  the  eternal. 

The  fundamental  missionary  duty,  then,  is  the  application 
to  the  need  of  the  world  of  God  in  Christ,  its  only  hope  and 
salvation,  and  the  fundamental  elements  of  the  missionary  motive 
are  compassion  for  the  world,  and  loyalty  to  Christ  and  the 
Spirit  of  a  fair  and  equal  love  which  shares  its  good  with  all. 
The  missionary  movement  will  be  carried  on  by  those  who  feel 
the  burden  of  this  duty  and  respond  to  these  motives.  There  are, 
however,  supplementary  and  subordinate  considerations,  which 
do  not  constitute  the  missionary  motive  but  which  are  of  interest 
and  significance. 

In  the  first  place,  the  outward  movement  of  civilisation  re- 
quires the  missionary  enterprise,  for  three  purposes, — to  advance 
it,  to  support  it,  and  to  correct  it.  The  missionary  enterprise 
has  advanced  this  movement  steadily  from  the  beginning,  and 
even  now,  when  the  movement  has  progressed  so  far  that  it  is 
prone  to  ignore  missions,  it  is  receiving  evident  advantage  from 
them.  Two  quotations  from  recent  consular  reports  will  suffice 
as  illustrations :  "  The  medical  branch  of  missions,"  reports  the 
American  Vice-Consul  at  Chefoo,  "  is  probably  doing  more  to- 
ward reconciling  the  Chinese  to  foreign  association  than  any 


36  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

other  agency.  In  Weihsien,  where  no  foreigner  has  hitherto  been 
permitted  to  live,  an  American  medical  missionary  has  recently 
opened  a  dispensary.  During  a  recent  overland  trip  to  that  city, 
the  mention  of  acquaintance  with  the  missionary  invariably  put 
me  on  a  friendly  footing.  Such  contact  with  this  work  forces 
the  conclusion  that  the  missionaries  are  practical  forerunners  of 
commercial  enterprise.  They  seldom  fail  to  win  the  respect  and 
esteem  even  of  those  who  do  not  accept  their  doctrines,  and 
they  unconsciously  pave  the  way  for  further  foreign  intercourse." 
— (Daily  Consular  and  Trade  Reports,  March  16,  1909,  p.  13.) 
"  There  are  about  fifty  American  missionaries  living  within  this 
territory,"  writes  the  American  Consul-General  at  Boma,  in 
Africa,  "  whose  civilising  work  and  influence  among  a  large  por- 
tion of  the  1,500,000  natives  comprising  the  population  will  un- 
doubtedly result  in  largely  increasing  the  demand  for  light- 
weight cheap  clothing  and  for  numerous  household  articles. 
These  agents  of  civilisation  are  pioneer  salesmen  and  are  instru- 
ments in  introducing  products  of  their  own  country.  .  .  .  One 
of  the  first  steps  to  be  taken  at  the  present  time,  aiming  at  the 
introduction  of  American  goods  into  this  country  by  the  mail 
order  system  is  to  get  in  touch  with  the  missionaries." — (Daily 
Consular  and  Trade  Reports,  April  5,  1909,  p.  3.)  But  missions 
are  advancing  civilisation  in  a  far  more  vital  and  significant  way 
than  simply  by  opening  markets  for  foreign  goods  and  disposing 
the  people  to  foreign  intercourse.  They  are  planting  the  prin- 
ciples of  ordered  life,  teaching  people  what  lies  at  the  base  of 
civilisation,  and  so  permanently  increasing  their  capacity  for 
trade  and  elevating  the  class  of  trade  of  which  they  are  capable. 
"  The  benefits  of  the  missionary  work  in  New  Guinea,"  says 
Hugh  Milman,  a  magistrate,  "  are  immense,  inter-tribal  fights 
formerly  so  common  being  at  an  end,  and  trading  and  com- 
munication, one  tribe  with  another,  now  being  carried  on  with- 
out fear."  "  It  is  they,"  says  Sir  H.  H.  Johnston,  speaking  of 
British  Central  Africa,  "  who  in  many  cases  have  first  taught 
the  natives  carpentry,  joining,  masonry,  tailoring,  cobbling,  en- 
gineering, bookkeeping,  printing,  European  cookery,  to  say  noth- 
ing of  reading,  writing,  arithmetic,  and  a  smattering  of  general 


THE  MISSIONARY  DUTY  AND  MOTIVES         3? 

knowledge.  Almost  invariably  it  has  been  to  missionaries  that 
the  natives  of  interior  Africa  have  owed  their  first  acquaintance 
with  a  printing  press,  the  turning-lathe,  the  mangle,  the  flat-iron, 
the  sawmill,  and  the  brick  mould."  And  in  lands  of  a  more 
advanced  and  compacted  civilisation  of  their  own,  like  China, 
the  missionary  has  introduced  movable  type,  the  newspaper, 
Western  education,  scientific  textbooks,  and  practically  all  that 
is  known  of  medicine  and  surgery.  He  was  China's  only  guide 
in  her  first  steps.  God  has  wrought  in  the  world  by  many  forces, 
but  none  has  compared  in  purity  and  power  with  the  force  of 
missions.  "  The  missionary,  the  philanthropist,  the  social  re- 
former, and  others  of  the  same  sort,"  says  Lord  Cromer  patron- 
isingly,  "  should  have  a  fair  field.  Their  intentions  are  excellent, 
although  at  times  their  judgment  may  be  defective.  They  will, 
if  under  some  control,  probably  do  much  good  on  a  small  scale. 
They  may  even,  being  carried  away  by  the  enthusiasm  which 
pays  no  heed  to  worldly  prudence,  effect  reforms  more  important 
than  those  of  the  administrator  and  politician,  who  will  follow 
cautiously  in  their  track,  and  perhaps  reap  the  result  of  their 
labours."  Financially,  the  missionary  agency  is  one  of  the  pettiest 
forces  at  work  on  the  non-Christian  world.  Its  total  annual  ex- 
penditure is  less  than  the  cost  of  three  battleships,  and  not  as 
much  as  the  annual  maintenance  of  the  Italian  navy.  Yet  small 
as  it  is,  it  has  made  a  deeper  impact  in  the  name  of  civilisation 
than  any  other  agency,  and  all  its  mistakes  from  the  beginning, 
put  together,  have  not  been  one-thousandth  part  as  costly  as  the 
single  mistake  of  Gordon's  fall  in  the  Soudan  and  what  followed 
it,  to  whomsoever  that  mistake  may  have  been  due. 

The  missionary  movement  has  not  only  advanced  civilisation ; 
it  has  been  and  is  required  to  support  it.  Civilisation  rests  upon 
great  moral  ideas.  It  is  not  a  mere  commercial  affair.  It 
could  not  be  at  all  the  great  commercial  affair  it  is  if  it  were 
not  for  the  moral  ideas  which  underlie  it.  It  is  only  possible 
as  the  people  who  would  enjoy  it  are  animated  in  some  real 
measure  by  the  principles  on  which  it  rests.  Marquis  Ito  saw 
a  great  light  in  this  regard  in  his  last  years.  Some  years  ago 
he  repudiated  the  idea  of  the  importance  of  religion  to  national 


38  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

life.  It  was  mere  superstition  from  which  intelligent  men  eman- 
cipated themselves,  but  in  December,  1908,  he  told  a  gathering 
of  Christian  people  at  a  dedication  of  a  building  in  Seoul  that 
in  the  early  years  of  Japan's  reformation  the  senior  statesmen 
were  opposed  to  religious  toleration,  especially  because  of  dis- 
trust of  Christianity.  "  But,"  said  he,  "  I  fought  vehemently 
for  freedom  of  belief  and  propagation,  and  finally  triumphed. 
My  reasoning  was  this:  civilisation  depends  upon  morality,  and 
the  highest  morality  upon  religion.  Therefore,  religion  must  be 
tolerated  and  encouraged.  It  is  for  the  same  reason  that  I 
welcome  the  Young  Men's  Christian  Association,  believing  that 
it  is  a  powerful  ally  in  the  great  task  I  have  undertaken  in 
attempting  to  put  the  feet  of  Korea  upon  the  pathway  of  true 
civilisation."  President  Taft  also  saw  this  light  when  he  went 
out  as  Governor-General  to  the  Philippines.  "  The  missionary 
societies,"  said  he,  when  he  grasped  the  facts,  "  have  great 
responsibilities  with  reference  to  the  expansion  of  civilisation 
in  distant  lands,  as  I  came  to  realise  much  more  fully  than  ever 
before  in  my  contact  with  this  work  while  in  the  Far  East. 
No  one  can  study  the  movement  of  modern  civilisation  from 
an  impartial  standpoint  and  not  realise  that  Christianity  and 
the  spread  of  Christianity  are  the  only  basis  for  hope  of  modern 
civilisation  in  the  growth  of  popular  self-government."  Chris- 
tianity is  the  only  religion  which  can  do  this  service  for  civilisa- 
tion. It  is  the  only  religion  which  can  live  with  civilisation, 
for  the  reason  that  what  is  good  in  civilisation  Christianity 
has  produced  or  fortified,  and  that  what  is  evil  in  it  Christianity 
alone  can  correct  and  subdue. 

And  there  is  much  evil  in  Western  civilisation  with  which 
Christianity  must  wage  war.  The  conflict  is  fiercer  than  ever 
now  at  home,  and  the  need  of  Christianity  as  the  corrective 
of  our  civilisation  abroad  is  even  more  acute  because  the  brand 
we  export  is  tainted,  our  best  badly  tainted  with  our  worst. 
To  correct  that  taint,  to  accuse  civilisation  of  its  treachery 
whenever  it  misrepresents  our  highest  to  the  other  nations,  to 
express  to  those  nations  the  ideal  of  service  with  which  Chris- 
tianity is  seeking  to  permeate  human  life,  to  teach  purity  and 


THE  MISSIONARY  DUTY  AND  MOTIVES         39 

love,  where  so  many  are  teaching  lust  and  hate,  to  hold  the 
whole  movement  of  the  West  true  to  its  missionary  duty — 
for  this  ministry  foreign  missions  are  indispensable  to  civilisa- 
tion. As  Mr.  Roosevelt  has  plainly  put  it :  "  In  past  history 
it  has  ever  been  true  that  all  enterprises,  whether  of  govern- 
ments or  of  private  individuals,  whether  of  scholars  or  of 
men  of  action,  have  needed  the  awakening  and  controlling  power 
of  that  high  and  self-sacrificing  morality  which  accompanies 
the  Christian  religion,  and  nowadays  it  is  needed  more  than 
ever  because  of  the  marvellous  ways  in  which  both  the  good 
and  bad  in  civilised  nations  are  being  carried  to  the  utmost  parts 
of  the  earth."  The  good  and  the  bad!  "  I  can  honestly  state," 
said  Joseph  Thompson  of  his  visit  to  missions  in  Nyasaland, 
"  that  for  the  first  time  in  all  my  wide  African  travels,  I  have 
found  a  spot  where  the  advent  of  the  white  man  may  be  de- 
scribed as  an  unmitigated  blessing  to  the  nation."  The  mis- 
sionary duty  would  extend  that  spot  to  cover  the  whole  non- 
Christian  world.  The  outward  movement  of  civilisation  requires 
the  missionary  enterprise,  but  the  outward  movement  of  civilisa- 
tion should  be  itself  a  missionary  enterprise.  The  foreign  mis- 
sions of  the  Church  alone  are  capable  of  impressing  that  ideal 
upon  it. 

Not  only  does  the  outward  movement  of  civilisation  require 
the  missionary  enterprise.  The  Church  also  requires  it.  "  We 
are  plainly  taught  by  God,"  says  an  old  writer  on  "  Obedience, 
the  Life  of  Missions,"  "  that  it  was  for  this  very  purpose  that 
the  Church  was  established.  God  placed  it  where  it  is,  in  the 
centre  of  its  own  particular  orbit — just  as  He  did  the  sun  and 
the  moon  and  the  stars — to  give  light  unto  all.  For  this  very 
end,  and  no  other,  were  each  particular  Church  and  the  Church 
universal — which  is  the  sum  of  all  particular  Churches — ordained 
and  established  on  the  poles  of  truth  and  in  the  sphere  of  sinful 
humanity,  that  they  might  each  one,  according  to  their  ability, 
irradiate  its  darkness  with  the  light  of  the  glorious  Gospel  of 
the  blessed  God." — (Smyth,  "Obedience,  the  Life  of  Missions," 
p.  54).  No  institution  can  deliberately  repudiate  its  fundamental 
purpose,  its  main  reason  for  being,  and  not  suffer  for  it.     The 


4o  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

Christian  Church  will  certainly  suffer  if  she  does  it.  She  has 
suffered.  Her  energies  have  shrivelled,  her  visions  have  died, 
her  grasp  on  her  nearby  problem  has  relaxed,  her  sense  of  God 
has  thinned  until  it  has  vanished,  and  she  has  lost  her  power 
whenever  and  so  far  as  she  has  forgotten  or  evaded  her  mission 
to  the  world.  She  wonders  why  her  word  is  so  ineffective,  and 
her  projects  so  unavailing,  and  her  activities  so  fruitless.  The 
reason  is  she  has  betrayed  her  character  and  ignored  her  busi- 
ness. The  last  word  of  Christ  shows  her  where  the  secret  of 
a  new  and  sufficient  power  is  to  be  found.  In  the  execution 
of  her  mission  to  the  whole  world,  and  only  so,  Christ  promises 
with  all  His  power  to  be  in  the  Church.  Our  schemes  and  our 
preachings  are  impotent  because  He  is  absent  from  them,  and 
there  is  only  one  way  to  bring  Him  back  into  them.  Exhorta- 
tion and  resolution  will  not  avail.  Prayer  itself  will  be  futile 
because  unreal,  if  offered  on  the  old  basis  of  distortion  of  the 
divine  purpose  and  disobedience  to  the  divine  will  and  dis- 
loyalty to  the  divine  character.  There  is  one  way  only  to 
bring  Christ  and  His  divine  power  into  the  Church,  and  that 
is  to  bring  the  Church  into  her  right  mission  and  purpose  toward 
the  world,  as  the  channel  for  the  life  of  God  into  all  the  life 
of  all  men.  And  any  sacrifice  by  the  Church  of  her  true  mis- 
sionary character  involves  loss  not  to  the  Church  alone,  but  to 
the  world  through  the  Church.  "  Let  us  heed  the  solemn  warn- 
ing across  the  ages  of  the  Church  of  the  fourth  century.  Imagine 
what  would  have  been  if  the  Nicene  Council,  when  for  the 
last  time  the  garment  of  Christ  was  seen  unrent  and  all  Christen- 
dom sat  together,  had  done  its  duty,  and  instead  of  disputing 
upon  dogma  and  dividing  on  doctrine,  had  become  a  great 
missionary  assembly,  and  felt  upon  miter  and  imperial  circlet 
the  Pentecostal  flame.  Suppose,  only  suppose,  that  the  great 
council,  whose  supreme  ability  no  student  of  history  can  doubt, 
had  done  its  full  missionary  duty,  and  the  northern  and  southern 
nations  had  been  converted  before,  instead  of  after  the  con- 
quest of  the  Roman  Empire.  Suppose  Arabia  had  known  a 
missionary  Christ  before  Mohammed,  and  that  Saxon  on  the 
Elbe,  and  French  beyond  the  Rhine,  and  Goth  below  the  two 


THE  MISSIONARY  DUTY  AND  MOTIVES         41 

rivers,  had  heard  the  Gospel  in  the  fourth  century  instead  of 
the  sixth,  seventh,  and  eighth.  Is  it  not  possible  that  a  thou- 
sand years  of  wasted  history,  which  have  cast  more  than  three- 
quarters  of  the  Christian  Church  under  the  cloud  of  superstition, 
would  have  been  saved  if  the  Church  of  the  fourth  century 
had  been  a  missionary  Church,  looking  without,  instead  of 
within?" — (Talcott  Williams,  "  Men  and  Missions,"  p.  11  ff.) 

The  missionary  duty  bids  us  not  repeat  that  mistake  to-day. 
Many  other  voices  are  summoning  us  to  reproduce  it.  We  are 
bidden  to  give  heed  to  our  doctrine.  The  doctrine  will  take 
care  of  itself  if  we  carry  God  in  Christ  to  the  world.  It  will 
pollute  fast  enough  if  we  sit  down  about  it  to  dissect  it.  We 
are  bidden  to  look  at  home  and  see  what  we  shall  see.  We 
shall  see  far  worse  things  if  we  fail  to  see,  also,  and  as  equally 
in  the  love  and  care  of  God  and  of  equal  title  in  the  Gospel, 
those  other  sheep  of  whom  Christ  spoke,  and  the  uttermost  parts 
of  the  earth.  Rather  the  very  hope  of  the  Church  for  her  life 
and  work  at  home  is  in  her  clearer  discernment  and  richer 
acceptance  of  her  whole  mission. 

And  just  such  an  urgent  need  throughout  the  world  as  the 
Church  of  the  fourth  century  failed  to  see  in  its  day  confronts 
the  Church  in  ours.  There  is  the  obvious  abiding  and  always 
urgent  need  of  every  human  life  for  Christ.  If  we  Christian 
men  need  Christ,  every  man  needs  Him.  If  we  find  His  help 
sufficient  and  His  salvation  indispensable,  other  men's  hearts, 
we  need  to  remember,  are  just  like  our  own.  If  we  could  not 
dispense  with  Christ,  if  we  sing  truthfully,  "  I  could  not  do 
without  Thee,  Thou  Saviour  of  the  lost,"  other  men  cannot  do 
without  Him.  The  old  missionary  appeal  which  bade  us  reach 
men  because  they  are  so  fast  passing  beyond  our  reach  is  an 
ever  true  appeal.  Men  are  passing  away  to  whom  Christ  should 
have  been  given  before  they  passed  out  from  us,  given  because 
they  needed  Him  while  they  were  here,  given  because  they  should 
have  not  passed  out  without  Him  whither  they  have  gone. 

The  ideal  of  the  evangelisation  of  the  world  in  this  genera- 
tion is  a  legitimate  ideal.  It  is  more  than  that.  It  is  a  necessary 
ideal.     The  Gospel  can  never  be  given  to  the  whole  world  in 


42  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

any  other  way.  Dead  men  cannot  evangelise  the  world.  Even 
if  you  could  evangelise  dead  men,  that  would  leave  the  living 
world  still  to  be  evangelised.  "  Every  creature  "  means  to  us 
"  our  generation."  To  preach  the  Gospel  to  them  means  to 
evangelise  them.  Now  is  our  day  of  obedience,  and  now  the 
word  of  Christ  and  what  that  word  embodies,  the  will  of  God 
and  the  need  of  the  world,  call  us  to  carry  forward  to  completion 
the  missionary  task. 

But  the  present  situation  has  also  its  special  urgency.  The 
whole  world  is  astir  now  and  plastic.  Great  tides  are  running 
which  should  be  grasped  and  ordered  in  the  name  of  God. 
Nations  are  reshaping  and  new  destinies  are  determining.  It 
is  Christianity's  day  of  opportunity  and  trial.  Fifteen  years 
ago  the  authoritative  books  on  Asia  preached  the  doctrine  of 
its  stagnation  and  sterility.  Mr.  Norman  applied  to  China  the 
lines : 

"  Aloof  from  our  mutation  and  unrest, 
Alien  to  our  achievement  and  desires." 

And  Mr.  Townsend  declared  that  some  mysterious  fiat  of  arrest 
seemed  to  have  fallen  upon  the  yellow  races,  making  them  in- 
accessible to  new  principles  from  without  and  stamping  all 
foreign  missions  whether  of  politics  or  religion  as  futile  and 
vain. 

We  look  out  upon  a  situation  to-day  completely  belying  these 
hopeless  predictions.  We  see  in  Asia  a  great  industrial  awaken- 
ing. In  these  fifteen  years  the  exports  of  Japan  have  grown 
from  91,000,000  yen  to  432,000,000  and  her  imports  from  71,- 
000,000  to  494,000,000.  The  China  railroads  have  grown  from 
200  miles  to  3,746,  with  1,622  more  under  construction.  New 
industries  are  springing  up  everywhere,  and  the  world  has  some- 
thing to  look  forward  to  in  the  production  by  cheap  labour 
from  raw  material,  produced  on  the  spot  by  cheap  labour,  and 
manufactured  on  machinery  made  by  cheap  labour,  of  the  very 
commodities  which  now  constitute  our  export  trade.  Against 
that  industrial  development  our  protective  tariffs  will  take  on 
a  pitiful  significance.     We  see  in  Asia,  also,  a  great  intellectual 


THE. MISSIONARY  DUTY  AND  MOTIVES         43 

awakening."**  Six  million  pupils  are  in  the  public  schools  of  Japan. 
In  China,  the  vastest  nation  on  earth  has  cut  away  its  old  and 
antiquated  system  and  is  groping  toward  the  new  lights,  and 
a  new  press  is  beginning  the  education  of  the  multitudes  too 
old  to  go  to  school,  while  a  new  post-office  system,  with  2,000 
offices,  and  handling,  in  1906,  103,000,000  articles,  is  beginning 
to  unify  the  thoughts  of  the  people.  And  what  is  more  wonder- 
ful, the  Moslem  world  has  been  talking  of  freedom  of  thought, 
and  actually  thinking  freely.  The  world  never  dreamed  to  see 
the  Moslem  caliph  and  sultan  flung  down  by  Mohammedan 
hands  in  the  interest  of  free  institutions.  All  Asia  has  begun 
to  think  and  talk,  and  its  language  is  the  language  of  men  of 
free  minds.  The  froth  of  license  and  excess  is  only  the  sure 
evidence  of  the  deep  tides  running  beneath.  We  see  also  in 
Asia  a  great  political  awakening,  not  only  in  the  sense  of  a 
demand  for  constitutional  and  representative  government,  though 
that  is  wonderful  enough,  but  also  in  the  sense  of  a  great  de- 
velopment of  the  spirit  of  nationalism,  the  Eastern  nations  feel- 
ing at  last  the  deep  influence  of  those  ideals  which  for  two 
generations  have  increasingly  dominated  the  political  movements 
of  the  West.  We  see  in  Asia  also  a  great  moral  awakening. 
The  political  awakening  is  at  bottom  ethical.  It  is  only  a  sign 
of  the  Asiatic's  awakening  to  manhood  and  the  sense  of  human 
equality.  He  began  with  a  sense  of  lofty  superiority,  then 
became  either  abject  or  menial  and  angry  and  aloof,  but  now 
stands  forth  on  his  feet  again,  to  be  treated  and  to  treat  others 
as  men.  The  idea  of  equality  and  brotherhood  on  which  Asia 
now  stands  is  a  distinctly  ethical  principle.  Indeed,  it  is  a 
purely  religious  principle,  which  East  and  West  alike  owe  to 
the  influence  of  Christianity.  The  East  is  beginning  herself  to 
realise  that  her  awakening  is  an  awakening  to  moral  needs,  and 
that  there  is  only  one  quarter  where  she  can  find  what  she 
requires.  "  It  is  a  question,"  said  Count  Okuma  not  long  ago 
to  young  men  in  Japan,  "  whether  we  have  not  lost  moral  fibre 
as  the  result  of  the  many  new  influences  to  which  we  have  been 
subjected.  Development  has  been  intellectual,  not  moral.  The 
efforts  which  Christians  are  making  to  supply  to  the  country 


44  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

a  high  standard  of  conduct  are  welcomed  by  all  right-thinking 
people.  As  you  read  the  Bible  you  may  think  it  is  antiquated, 
out  of  date.  The  words  it  contains  may  so  appear,  but  the  noble 
life  which  it  holds  up  to  admiration  is  something  that  will  never 
be  out  of  date,  however  much  the  world  may  progress.  Live 
and  preach  this  life,  and  you  will  supply  to  the  nation  just 
what  it  needs  at  the  present  juncture."  And  we  see  in  Asia, 
also,  a  great  religious  awakening.  We  see  it  in  the  growth  of  eager, 
living,  aggressive  Christian  churches  among  the  natives  of  these 
lands,  but  even  more  in  the  widespread  groping  and  discontent, 
the  decaying  worship  at  idol  shrines,  the  increasing  apology  for 
idolatry,  the  abandonment  of  popular  forms  of  religion  in  the 
interest  of  what  is  esoteric  or  in  the  interest  of  older  forms 
now  construed  in  Christian  terminology,  in  the  anxious  search 
for  the  secret  of  power. 

And  this  condition  of  transition  and  opportunity  which  we 
see  in  Asia,  we  see  also  in  Africa  and  South  America.  The 
social,  industrial,  and  political  changes  which  are  passing  over 
Africa,  the  southward  movement  of  Islam,  the  need  of  a  unifying 
power,  the  call  for  life  from  dying  peoples,  and  in  South  America 
nations  with  deepening  moral  needs  because  without  God,  with 
a  Church  which  has  given  men  a  cross  without  a  Christ,  a 
dead  man  without  a  living  Saviour,  which  has  separated  ethics 
from  religion  and  lost  its  power  to  redeem  life,  and  which  calls 
as  loudly  for  the  vivifying  challenge  of  foreign  missions  as 
Hinduism  or  Islam,  with  a  civilisation  developing  fast  on  a 
basis  of  trade,  but  with  no  adequate  foundation  in  popular  educa- 
tion or  in  religious  principle — the  conditions  of  Africa  and 
South  America  press  upon  the  Christian  Church  with  an  appeal 
as  urgent  as  Asia's. 

Men  need  the  Gospel,  and  they  need  it  now.  And  the  nations 
need  the  Gospel,  and  they  need  it  now.  And  the  need  of  men 
and  nations  will  not  delay.  These  conditions  lay  a  great  burden 
upon  us.  This  great  awakening  will  prove  an  evil  and  disaster  if 
it  is  not  moralised,  and  it  can  be  moralised  only  by  Christianity. 
The  pressing  question  is,  shall  we  have  a  renaissance  without 
a  reformation,  an  awakening  of  the  world's  commercial  passion 


THE  MISSIONARY  DUTY  AND  MOTIVES  45 

and  its  intellectual  life  without  any  awakening  of  its  soul,  or 
with  its  awakened  soul  unfed  ?  "  History,"  says  Professor  Lind- 
say, "  knows  nothing  of  revivals  of  moral  living  apart  from  some 
new  religious  impulse.  The  motive  power  has  always  come 
through  leaders  who  have  had  communion  with  the  unseen." 
Has  our  communion  been  real  enough  to  make  us  leaders,  to 
give  us  vision  of  our  opportunity  and  will  to  be  obedient  to 


our  vision 


There  are  those,  however,  who  tell  us  that  we  ought  not  to 
interfere  with  the  religious  ideas  and  institutions  of  the  non- 
Christian  peoples.  Some  say  that  they  are  not  worth  trying 
to  win  to  Christianity.  I  am  only  quoting  what  we  hear  year 
in  and  year  out.  No  one  who  really  knows  what  Christianity 
is  will  say  this  because  he  knows  that  it  is  of  one  blood  that 
God  has  made  all  men.  No  one  who  knows  history  will  say 
this  because  he  knows  that  it  was  from  such  as  these  that 
Christianity  made  men  out  of  his  ancestors.  No  one  who  knows 
the  non-Christian  races  will  say  this,  because  he  knows  that  there 
is  in  them  as  good  material  for  the  Gospel  to  work  upon  as 
there  is  in  the  West,  or  has  ever  been  in  the  world  anywhere. 

Some  say  that  they  stand  in  no  need  of  Christianity.  "  I 
have  found  that  they  [the  South  African  natives]  are  highly 
moral,"  says  a  correspondent  who  signs  himself  "  Captain  Late 
South  African  Field  Forces,"  in  the  New  York  Sun  of  July  n, 
1905: 

I  have  invariably  found  them,  in  their  native  state,  living 
lives  that  we  who  call  ourselves  Christians  would  do  well  to 
pattern  after.  .  .  .  It  is  a  great  pity  that  in  giving  them  the 
benefit  of  our  knowledge  we  undermine  their  moral  character 
in  the  process.  Were  we  all  good,  and  were  our  teachers  all 
good,  capable  only  of  acts  becoming  their  religion,  all  would  be 
well ;  but  unfortunately,  the  native  copies  the  bad  as  well  as  the 
good.  Therefore,  when  our  heathen  brother  accepts  our  religion 
because  he  believes  it  is  good,  inasmuch  as  it  is  ours,  he  also 
learns  to  drink  whiskey  because  he  sees  the  white  man  drink  it; 
he  learns  to  smoke  because  the  white  man  smokes ;  he  learns  to 
lie  because  the  white  man  lies  to  him ;  he  learns  to  steal  because 
the  white  man  steals,  and  he  observes  that  the  white  man  has 


46  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

not  the  same  respect  for  moral  laws  that  he  has  in  his  native 
state,  and  he  feels  his  law  must  be  wrong,  and  copies  the  white 
man's  way. 

I  wish  to  assure  you  that  I  am  not  exaggerating  one  iota  in 
my  expressions  herein.  There  is  no  honest  traveller  (who  is  not 
a  missionary)  who  has  observed  the  results  of  mission  work 
in  South  Africa  or  any  other  country  who  will  not  support  me 
in  my  assertions. 

The  development  of  heathen  and  unchristianised  nations  is 
a  development  that  is  made  not  for  the  benefit  of  the  natives, 
but  for  the  benefit  of  civilised  nations,  to  provide  new  fields 
for  the  ever-increasing  surplus  of  population.  The  heathen 
native  who  would  live  on  forever,  if  left  in  his  natural  state, 
is  crushed  under  the  wheels  of  our  ever-increasing  civilisation. 
He  is  sacrificed  on  the  altar  of  the  white  man's  advancement. 
We  have  no  better  example  of  this  than  the  North  American 
Indian. 

The  white  race  and  its  methods  must  rule  the  universe,  but 
let  us  not  deceive  ourselves  by  attempting  to  believe  that  our 
religion  improves  those  who  have  not  been  born  to  it. 

It  will  seem  strange  that  a  believer  in  religion  could  feel 
that  the  religion  of  Jesus  Christ  could  destroy  a  race,  but  that 
is  what  I  believe  to  be  true.  Not  that  the  religion  itself  could 
destroy  a  heathen  people,  but  we  have,  unfortunately,  more  of 
bad  to  impart  to  them  than  of  good.  We  are  anxious  to  impart 
the  rules  of  righteousness,  but,  unfortunately  for  those  whom 
we  would  teach,  our  lives  are  the  reverse  of  our  doctrine,  and 
our  heathen  brethren  follow  not  our  doctrine,  but  the  example 
of  our  daily  lives. 

I  have  quoted  this  curious  production  because  it  is  fairly 
typical  of  much  popular  talk  about  missions,  and  also  because 
it  is  such  an  odd  mixture  of  error  and  truth.  Would  that  this 
idyllic  picture  of  the  African  native  in  his  estate  untouched  by 
Christian  missionaries  were  true,  and  that  he  stood  in  no  need 
of  our  moral  message,  but  let  us  read  an  extract  from  a  letter 
from  Dr.  Alexander  Brown  of  the  Livingstonia  Mission,  dated 
Serenje,  N.  E.  R.,  14th  September,  1908: 

I  shall  never  forget  the  poor  drunken  creature  of  a  chief 
who  staggered  along  the  path  to  meet  me,  shot  his  arm  up  in 
the  air,  and,  by  way  of  good-morning  said,  "  Thank  you,  mas- 


THE  MISSIONARY  DUTY  AND  MOTIVES         47 

ter  " ;  or  the  drunken  village  I  passed  through,  whose  collections 
of  half-naked  maudlin  women  sat  drinking  beer  and  singing. 
Or  another  village  I  approached  on  a  Saturday  night  after  a 
long  day's  tramp,  utterly  fagged  out.  A  Saturday  night  at  home 
was  curiously  persistent  in  my  thoughts  as  I  drew  near  it. 
There  was  general  shouting  and  singing  going  on,  which  did 
not  cease  as  I  entered  the  village  just  at  dark.  "  What's  the 
noise  about?"  "Beer  drinking,  sir."  It  is  the  nearest  resem- 
blance to  the  Glasgow  Green  on  a  Saturday  night  I  have  yet 
seen  in  Africa.  There  was  general  restlessness,  excitement,  and 
singing,  or  rather  shouting.  It  kept  up  for  hours,  and  grew 
louder,  and  a  fire  was  set  agoing,  then  a  hut  caught  it,  or  it 
was  done  intentionally,  and  the  lurid  flames  leapt  up  and  lapped 
it  round  and  the  roof  crashed  down,  and  I  thought  there  was 
danger  of  a  general  conflagration.  But  my  boys  laughed  at 
my  fears.  I  went  over  to  it  in  among  the  crowd,  of  whom  two 
drunken  women  were  specially  distinguishing  themselves  by  their 
howling  and  rolling  on  the  ground.  "  What  is  the  matter  with 
these  two,  Yona?"  I  asked.  "One,  sir,"  he  said,  "is  crying 
for  her  pot,  and  the  other  is  crying  for  her  beer."  I  went  away 
to  my  tent  sick  at  heart. 

Surely  there  is  as  great  need  here  for  whatever  the  Gospel 
can  do  as  there  is  in  Glasgow.  And  indeed,  it  is  at  this  point 
that  the  strongest  opposition,  or  at  any  rate,  the  heaviest  lethargy 
is  found,  at  least  in  America.  There  is  so  much  to  be  done  at 
home  that  it  is  wrong  to  divert  Christian  energies  into  the  work 
of  distant  missions.  Another  newspaper  correspondent  puts  the 
objection  forcibly: 

If  India  were  the  only  country  in  the  world  with  souls  in 
peril,  the  case  [for  foreign  missions,  says  he]  would  be  very 
different ;  but  with  the  world  as  it  is,  the  game  is  not  worth 
the  candle.  One  mission  like  Jerry  McAuley's  in  the  slums  of 
New  York  does  more  lasting  good  and  to  better  subjects  than 
any  dozen  in  India  or  Africa.  All  the  missionaries  in  India 
could  be  located  in  the  three  cities  of  New  York,  Chicago,  and 
St.  Louis,  to  say  nothing  of  others  with  slums  just  as  black, 
and  have  plenty  of  room  for  more.  It  is  not  only  a  waste  of 
good  material  to  send  missionaries  to  the  sticks  and  stones  of 
India,  so  long  as  we  have  such  frightful  fields  for  missionary 
work  in  our  great  cities,  but  it  is  a  sin  against  sinners  worthy 


48  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

of  salvation.  [For  he  has  already  pointed  out  that]  the  high  caste 
Hindu's  mind  is  no  more  capable  of  moulding  itself  to  the 
requirements  of  such  a  religion  as  ours  and  thinking  our  thoughts 
about  it,  than  he  is  to  set  up  for  himself  and  maintain  over  all 
India  a  republican  government.  Christians  worthy  of  such  a 
Saviour  as  ours  are  made  of  very  different  stuff  from  that  which 
forms  the  natives  of  good  caste.  As  for  those  who  are  so  low 
as  to  have  no  caste  to  lose,  shall  we  seek  to  clothe  asses  with 
immortality? — (W.  T.  Hornaday,  in  the  New  York  Tribune, 
December  2d,  1885.) 

The  Hindu  who  objects  to  Christian  missions  would  not 
be  likely  to  welcome  this  ally,  but  it  is  the  natural  and  sig- 
nificant fact  that  those  who  have  the  highest  estimate  of  the 
non-Christian  peoples  are  not  the  opponents  but  the  friends  of 
missions. 

Foreign  missions,  however,  do  not  rob  or  weaken  the  forces 
of  the  Church  at  home.  They  multiply  them.  The  home  mission 
work  has  had  most  of  its  roots  in  the  foreign  missionary  spirit. 
In  America  it  was  foreign  missions  which  originated  the  home 
mission  activities.  To  recall  the  foreign  missionaries  and  curtail 
the  work  would  be  to  paralyse  and  ultimately  to  annihilate  both 
home  missions  and  the  Church  herself.  Her  life  would  dry 
up  and  God  would  cast  her  sapless  boughs  aside  to  be  burned. 
Every  man  sent  abroad  enlists  the  energy  of  ten  men  in  the 
home  work  of  the  Church,  and  every  dollar  sent  abroad  means 
the  investment  of  ten  in  the  work  of  redeeming  those  lands 
whose  salvation  depends  upon  the  fidelity  with  which  they  seek 
to  save  others. 

For  these  lands  are  not  keeping  at  home  their  agencies  of 
evil.  That  is  the  truth  in  the  words  of  the  South  African  captain. 
All  over  the  world  new  hate,  new  lust,  new  vice,  new  wrong 
have  gone  out  from  Christendom.  Are  they  to  be  allowed  to 
go  unchecked?  Are  we  to  evangelise  the  world  with  the  worst 
we  know  and  not  with  the  best?  Are  our  brothels  and  saloons, 
both  stocked  from  the  West,  to  be  set  up  in  the  East,  and  the 
church,  the  hospital,  and  the  school  to  be  withheld? 

But  it  is  held  by  some  that  the  whole  outward  movement 
is  wrong.     The  East  should  be  let  alone.     It  has  a  right  to 


THE  MISSIONARY  DUTY  AND  MOTIVES         49 

live  its  own  life,  and  to  think  its  own  thoughts,  and  to  pursue 
its  own  ancient  way  undisturbed.  Its  civilisations  and  religions 
are  its  own,  and  better  adapted  to  it  than  ours  can  be.  The 
whole  outward  movement  of  Christendom  is  an  impertinence 
and  an  invasion.  There  are  some  who  say  this  only  of  our 
religious  mission.  The  commercial  and  political  invasion  they 
justify.  But  on  what  ground?  If  there  is  one  aspect  of  our 
relationship  to  the  non-Christian  nations  which  can  be  singled 
out  and  defended  as  resting  on  superior  grounds  it  is  our  re- 
ligious propaganda.  It  asks  nothing  in  return.  It  seeks  only 
to  give.  It  is  willing  to  be  judged  by  facts.  But  we  do  not 
seek  now  to  separate  it  for  two  reasons:  first,  because  the  rest 
of  our  Western  projection  upon  the  non-Christian  world  needs, 
as  has  already  been  pointed  out,  the  moralising  influence  of  the 
Christian  mission,  and  secondly,  because  I  believe  that  it  is 
not  by  what  we  call  the  foreign  missionary  movement  alone 
that  God  is  working  upon  the  non-Christian  world.  This  move- 
ment is  not  charged  with  all  the  responsibility  of  Christendom. 
It  is  given,  as  we  shall  see,  a  certain  distinct  work  to  do,  and 
that  work  is  the  fundamental  and  indispensable  work,  but  all 
the  outgoing  of  the  Christian  nations  upon  the  non-Christian 
world  should  bear  upon  it  the  stamp  of  God's  mission,  it  should 
seek  the  good  of  the  world,  it  should  make  its  contribution 
toward  the  building,  here  on  earth,  of  that  kingdom  in  which 
men  shall  serve  God  as  His  sons.  The  missionary  enterprise 
has  always  seen  that  it  was  the  foundation  and  the  custodian  of 
the  justifying  principle  of  intercourse  between  East  and  West. 
Now,  at  last,  the  other  forces  entering  into  that  intercourse 
are  realising  it  also.  "  The  change  of  sentiment  in  favour  of 
the  foreign  missionary  in  a  single  generation,"  says  Mr.  Roose- 
velt, "  has  been  remarkable.  The  whole  world,  which  is  rapidly 
coming  into  neighbourhood  relations,  is  recognising,  as  never 
before,  the  real  needs  of  mankind  and  is  ready  to  approve  and 
strengthen  all  the  moral  forces  which  stand  for  the  uplift  of 
humanity.  There  must  be  government  for  the  orderly  and  per- 
manent development  of  society.  There  must  be  intercourse 
among  peoples  in  the  interests  of  commerce  and  growth.     But, 


50  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

above  all,  there  must  be  moral  power,  established  and  main- 
tained under  the  leadership  of  good  men  and  women.  The  up- 
right and  farseeing  statesman,  the  honest  and  capable  trader, 
and  the  devoted  Christian  missionary  represent  the  combined 
forces  which  are  to  change  the  Africa  of  to-day  into  the  greater 
and  better  Africa  of  the  future.  .  .  .  Beyond  question  of  rule 
or  traffic  are  the  responsibilities  of  America  as  to  the  moral 
uplift  of  the  people  of  Africa.  This  responsibility  is  to  be  met 
in  co-operation  with  the  Christian  forces  of  other  nations."  We 
are  content  to  take  this  view.  The  principle  of  the  missionary 
enterprise  should  be  the  guiding  and  dominating  element  in  our 
contact  with  all  the  non-Christian  nations. 

It  is  futile  to  protest  against  that  contact,  to  say  that  the  non- 
Christian  nations  should  be  left  undisturbed.  That  issue  is 
closed.  They  are  already  disturbed.  The  West  never  had  any 
idea  of  leaving  them  undisturbed.  When  they  would  not  trade 
with  us  we  fought  with  them  and  compelled  them  to  trade. 
When  their  internal  condition  impeded  trade,  we  interfered  and 
suppressed  their  rebellions,  or  policed  their  politics,  or  bodily  took 
over  their  governments.  The  world  simply  will  not  stop  to  listen 
to  the  man  who  raises  a  vain  protest  against  the  whole  genius 
of  history.  The  world  knows  itself  to  be  one  world,  and  that 
no  part  of  it  is  to  be  alien  and  caviar  to  the  rest,  and  no  part 
of  the  world  is  more  bent  upon  this  intercourse  than  the  East. 
The  non-Christian  nations  are  open  and  will  not  be  closed. 
They  intend  to  have  for  themselves  the  power  which  they  see 
resides  in  civilisation.  The  simple  question  is,  will  we  give 
them  the  good  or  let  them  have  the  evil  only ;  will  we  give  them 
the  reality,  or  let  them  deceive  themselves  with  the  sham?  Are 
we  to  trade  with  them,  selling  them  things,  and  not  have  with 
them  a  truly  human  intercourse,  sharing  with  them  our  thoughts 
and  sympathies,  and  above  all,  our  hopes,  our  knowledge,  not 
of  the  world  only,  but  also  of  Him  who  made  the  world  and 
us  men  as  brothers  to  live  in  it? 

And  the  idea  that  the  East  ever  enjoyed  a  placid  and  con- 
tented civilisation  of  its  own,  that  it  ever  was  satisfied  with 
its  own  ideas  and  institutions,  or  if  it  was,  should  have  been 


THE  MISSIONARY  DUTY  AND  MOTIVES  51 

allowed  to  remain  so,  is  the  delusion  of  those  who  never  knew 
the  East  or  darker  Africa.  Arminius  Vambery  is  a  witness  who 
testifies  of  what  he  knows.  "  During  the  much-extolled  golden 
era  of  the  history  of  Asia,"  says  he  in  "  Western  Culture  in 
Eastern  Lands,"  "  tyranny  and  depotism  were  the  ruling  elements, 
justice  a  vain  chimera,  everything  depended  on  the  arbitrary  will 
of  the  sovereign,  and  a  prolonged  period  of  rest  and  peace  was 
quite  the  exception.  Asiatics,  from  motives  of  vanity  or  inborn 
laziness,  may  condone  these  abnormal  conditions,  but  still  it  re- 
mains our  duty  to  recognise  the  true  state  of  affairs,  and  to 
take  pity  upon  our  poor  oppressed  fellow-men.  Without  our 
help,  Asia  will  never  rise  above  its  low  level ;  and  even  granted 
that  the  politics  of  European  powers  are  not  purely  unselfish,  we 
must  nevertheless,  keeping  the  ultimate  object  in  view,  approve 
of  the  interference  of  Europe  in  the  affairs  of  the  East,  and 
give  the  undertaking  our  hearty  support.  Viewed  in  this  light, 
we  may  be  thankful  that  the  Christian  world  for  300  years  has 
been  unceasing  in  its  interference  in  Asiatic  affairs."  But  once 
again,  we  cannot  but  reflect  how  different  the  whole  history 
would  have  been,  and  upon  what  a  different  world  we  should 
now  look  out,  if,  after  penetrating  the  life  of  the  Roman  Empire, 
or  in  the  very  penetration  of  that  life,  the  Church  had  moved 
eastward  also,  not  in  the  frustrate  mission  of  the  Nestorian 
Church  in  the  seventh  century  only,  but  with  such  a  spirit 
and  such  a  Gospel  as  a  truly  world-compassing  Church  would 
possess  by  virtue  of  the  confirming  and  purifying  power  of  her 
obedience.  Before  Islam  had  petrified  the  life  of  Western  Asia 
and  set  up  the  Crescent  where  the  full  sun  might  have  shone, 
long  ages  before  wrong  and  injustice  in  international  dealings 
had  sown  hatred  and  distrust  in  central  and  eastern  Asia,  before 
the  bloody  centuries,  East  and  West,  had  twisted  all  human 
institutions  and  deflected  the  human  spirit,  the  Gospel  of  peace 
and  love  and  life  and  equality  might  have  remade  the  world. 
It  can  do  it  still. 

If  it  is  to  do  it,  Christian  nations,  and  the  Western  nations 
ought  to  be  Christian  nations,  must  represent  the  Gospel  in  their 
dealings  with  other  nations.     We  cannot  do  our  duty  to  the 


52  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

world  by  sending  it  the  Gospel  through  the  professional  mission- 
ary movement  at  the  same  time  that  we  traduce  the  Gospel 
politically.  The  Earl  of  Clarendon  wrote  a  letter  once,  years 
ago  when  he  was  principal  Secretary  of  State  for  Foreign  Affairs, 
to  Great  Britain's  esteemed  friend,  Sekeletu,  Chief  of  the  Moko- 
lolo  in  South  Central  Africa,  and  this  is  what  he  said: 

Ours  is  a  great  commercial  and  Christian  nation,  and  we 
desire  to  live  in  peace  with  all  men.  We  wish  others  to  sleep 
soundly  as  well  as  ourselves ;  and  we  hate  the  trade  in  slaves. 
We  are  all  the  children  of  one  common  Father;  and  the  slave- 
trade  being  hateful  to  Him,  we  give  you  a  proof  of  our  desire 
to  promote  your  prosperity  by  joining  you  in  the  attempt  to 
open  up  your  country  to  peaceful  commerce.  With  this  view 
the  Queen  sends  a  small  steam  vessel  to  sail  along  the  river 
Zambesi,  which  you  know  and  agreed  to  be  the  best  pathway 
for  conveying  merchandise,  and  for  the  purpose  of  exploring 
which  Dr.  Livingstone  left  you  the  last  time.  This  is,  as  all 
men  know,  "  God's  pathway  " ;  and  you  will,  we  trust,  do  all 
that  you  can  to  keep  it  a  free  pathway  for  all  nations,  and  let 
no  one  be  molested  when  travelling  on  the  river. 

We  are  a  manufacturing  people,  and  make  all  the  articles 
which  you  see  and  hear  of  as  coming  from  the  white  men.  We 
purchase  cotton  and  make  it  into  cloth ;  and  if  you  will  cultivate 
cotton  and  other  articles,  we  are  willing  to  buy  them.  No  matter 
how  much  you  may  produce,  our  people  will  purchase  it  all.  Let 
it  be  known  among  all  your  people,  and  among  all  the  surround- 
ing tribes,  that  the  English  are  the  friends  and  promoters  of 
all  lawful  commerce,  but  that  they  are  the  enemies  of  the  slave- 
trade  and  slave-hunting. 

We  assure  you,  your  elders  and  people,  of  our  friendship, 
and  we  hope  that  the  kindly  feelings  which  you  entertain  toward 
the  English  may  be  continued  between  our  children's  children ; 
and,  as  we  have  derived  all  our  greatness  from  the  Divine 
religion  we  received  from  Heaven,  it  will  be  well  if  you  consider 
it  carefully  when  any  of  our  people  talk  to  you  about  it. 

We  hope  that  Her  Majesty's  servants  and  people  will  be 
able  to  visit  you  from  time  to  time  in  order  to  cement  our  friend- 
ship, and  to  promote  mutual  welfare;  and,  in  the  meantime,  we 
recommend  you  to  the  protection  of  the  Almighty. 

If  the  West  would  always  speak  in  this  way  to  the  non- 
Christian  world,  if  it  would  hate  opium  and  robbery  and  im- 


THE  MISSIONARY  DUTY  AND  MOTIVES         53 

morality  and  plunder  and  dishonesty  as  much  as  it  hates  slavery, 
if  it  would  practise  the  Christianity  which  its  missionary  repre- 
sentatives preach,  if  it  would  realise  that  its  political  duty  to 
the  non-Christian  world  is  a  missionary  duty  as  truly  as  that 
the  Church  is  bound  to  serve  all  the  world,  the  rest  of  the  task 
would  be  easier.  And  the  Christian  nations  of  the  West  cannot 
recognise  their  responsibility  too  soon.  The  life  of  the  Church 
is  not  more  truly  bound  up  in  her  world-wide  mission  than  the 
life  of  the  state  is  dependent  upon  her  acceptance  of  her  Chris- 
tian duty  as  a  missionary  power.  For  the  foreign  missionary 
principle  is  the  condition  of  life.  "  I  declare  my  conviction," 
said  Sir  William  Hunter,  "  that  English  missionary  enterprise 
is  the  highest  modern  expression  of  the  world-wide  national  life 
of  our  race.  I  regard  it  as  the  spiritual  complement  of  Eng- 
land's instinct  for  colonial  expansion  and  imperial  rule,  and  I 
believe  that  any  falling  off  in  England's  missionary  efforts  would 
be  a  sure  sign  of  swiftly  coming  national  decay." 

But  what  we  are  considering  now  is  our  missionary  duty  and 
the  motives  which  will  lift  us  to  discharge  this  duty.  It  is 
true  that  all  Christendom  lies  under  the  missionary  duty,  and 
that  there  are  motives  which  should  lead  the  great  forces  which 
we  call  Christendom  to  fulfil  their  missionary  tasks,  but  the 
central  question  is  the  question  of  our  own  personal  action. 
Have  we  taken  up  our  duty?  If  we  have  not,  what  motives 
will  lead  us  to  do  so?  "Those  motives,"  replies  the  New  York 
Evening  Post,  "  are  now  almost  purely  humanitarian.  The  edu- 
cational, the  medical,  the  civilising  work  of  missionaries,  which 
in  many  countries  has  undoubtedly  been  wonderfully  beneficent 
and  fruitful,  this  is  the  great  argument  for  missions.  It  is  on 
this  that  the  emphasis  should  be  put,  and  we  are  sure  that  it 
would  mean  dollars  in  the  mission  treasuries  if  a  franker  stand 
were  taken  upon  this  rational  and  practical  basis.  Missions 
would  get  on  better,  as  most  people  do,  by  taking  one  world  at 
a  time."  The  shortest  and  most  summary  reply  to  this  view 
would  probably  be  found  in  the  missionary  contributions  of  the 
writer  of  this  editorial.  The  humanitarian  motives  have  their 
place,  but  the  missionary  duty  rests  on  deeper  foundations,  the 


54  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

missionary  spirit  flows  from  deeper  springs.  The  Church  will 
lift  herself  to  her  missionary  task,  not  when  she  has  learned 
to  forget  the  eternal  world,  but  when  she  has  learned  to  re- 
member it,  when  she  sees  in  men  not  only  bodies  to  be  healed 
and  minds  to  be  taught,  but  souls  to  be  saved,  the  image  of 
Christ  to  be  wrought  out ;  not  when  her  ideal  is  Western  civilisa- 
tion, but  when,  with  an  eye  the  more  humane  for  the  vision, 
she  sees,  though  yet  from  afar,  a  kingdom  of  God  to  come  upon 
the  earth  and  a  thorn-crowned  King  waiting  for  that  kingdom. 
Those  men  will  go  as  missionaries,  and  those  men  will  support 
them  as  they  go,  whom  the  love  of  Christ  constrains,  the  love 
of  Christ,  and  of  the  souls  for  whom  Christ  died. 


II 

THE  MISSIONARY  AIM  AND  METHODS 


II 

THE  MISSIONARY  AIM  AND  METHODS 

THE  missionary  enterprise  is  a  religious  enterprise.  This 
does  not  make  its  problems  simple,  but  it  makes  both 
its  aim  and  its  methods  much  simpler  than  they  would 
otherwise  be.  Of  course,  if  religion  is  conceived  to  take  in 
the  whole  of  human  life  and  to  include  politics  and  industry 
and  all  the  activities  and  relationships  of  men,  we  have  not 
made  any  progress  in  defining  the  purpose  of  the  missionary 
movement  by  calling  it  religious.  But  while  the  Christian  con- 
ception of  religion  is  indeed  all-embracing,  it  recognises  a  neces- 
sity of  definition  and  does  not  confuse  the  relations  and  func- 
tions of  family,  state,  and  Church,  and  it  acknowledges  social 
and  national  duties  which  are  missionary  in  character,  and 
which  religion  is  to  inspire,  but  which  it  is  not  the  formal  duty 
of  Christianity  organised  in  the  Church  to  control. 

The  West  and  Western  nations,  which  owe  all  their  good 
to  Christianity,  are  under  a  heavy  debt  to  the  rest  of  the  world, 
which  it  is  not  the  function  of  the  Christian  Church  to  discharge. 
It  is  the  function  of  the  Christian  Church  to  inspire  the  Christian 
nations  to  do  justice  and  to  give  help  to  the  non-Christian  nations, 
but  there  are  many  great  and  truly  Christian  services  with  which 
the  foreign  missionary  enterprise  is  not  charged.  They  are  to 
be  rendered  through  other  forms  of  international  relationship. 
The  suppression  of  the  slave  trade  was  one  such  service.  Alas, 
that  in  this  and  in  the  suppression  of  the  trade  in  liquor  and 
opium  and  in  firearms  among  savage  peoples  the  service  of  the 
West  should  consist  so  largely  merely  in  the  discontinuance  of 
its  own  wrongdoing!  And  even  of  all  the  duties  which  Chris- 
tianity is  to  perform  toward   the  world,    foreign  missions   are 

57 


58  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

not  the  sole  executive.  Most  of  the  work  of  Christianity  among 
the  non-Christian  nations  is  to  be  done,  not  through  foreign 
missions  at  all,  but  through  the  great  Christian  Churches  which 
are  to  grow  up  indigenously  in  these  nations,  and  something  is 
to  be  left  to  be  done  by  the  great  Churches  of  the  West  in 
friendly  co-operation  with  the  new  Churches,  when  the  dis- 
tinctive need  for  foreign  missions  will  have  wholly  passed  away. 
"  That  Christ's  religion  and  Christian  missions,"  says  a  thought- 
ful missionary  writer,  "  have  the  leading  part  to  play  in  the 
alleviation  of  woes  and  sufferings,  in  the  removal  of  human 
ills  and  wrongs,  in  the  social  progress  of  the  world,  can  admit 
of  no  doubt  whatever."  Yes,  but  the  leadership  of  Christ's 
religion  is  permanent  and  complete,  and  the  leadership  of  Chris- 
tion  missions  is  temporary  and  partial.  Christ's  religion  and 
Christian  missions  are  not  separate  and  co-ordinate  forces.  The 
one  force  is  Christ's  religion.  Christian  missions  are  merely 
the  agency  by  which  that  religion  makes  its  first  and  purest 
impact  upon  the  world.  When  the  religion  has  struck  in  its 
roots,  it  will  do  its  work  and  dispense  with  this  agency. 

Two  further  distinctions  will  bring  us  still  closer  to  a  true 
definition  of  the  aim  of  foreign  missions.  First,  the  aim  is  not 
to  be  confounded  with  the  results.  Many  things  result  which 
are  not  primarily  aimed  at.  The  Levant  is  astir  to-day,  and  the 
Turkish  Empire  and  the  Caliphate  have  been  shaken ;  the  Iwa- 
kura  Embassy  went  forth  from  Japan  and  came  back  with  fixed 
and  clarified  purposes  of  national  transformation ;  the  Chinese 
treaties  of  1858  opened  the  Empire  to  Christianity  and  author- 
ised for  the  Chinese  people  what  had  been  a  rcligio  illicita; 
great  wrongs  which  had  become  imbedded  in  the  religions  of 
India  have  died,  and  great  movements  of  reform  in  Hinduism 
have  come  to  life, — all  these  things  not  because  the  missionaries 
made  them  their  aim,  but  as  the  inevitable  result  of  the  work 
they  were  doing  in  seeking  to  achieve  that  which  was  their 
aim.  If  they  had  aimed  at  some  of  these  things,  they  would 
surely  have  missed  them.  How  long  would  a  Christian  mission 
have  been  tolerated  in  the  Turkish  Empire,  which  had  proclaimed 
as  its  aim  the  dissolution  of  Turkish  absolutism?    He  that  would 


THE  MISSIONARY  AIM  AND  METHODS  59 

seek  to  save  his  life  shall  lose  it.  That  law  is  of  wide  applica- 
tion in  the  life  and  work  of  men.  The  work  of  foreign  missions 
in  planting  the  divine  life  in  the  dead  nations  is  releasing  ener- 
gies whose  consequences  no  man  can  foretell.  Immense  moral, 
social,  and  political  effects  are  inevitable,  but  these  are  not  the 
aim  of  missions.  They  are  its  accessory  results.  "  The  mission 
that  is  to  prove  of  permanent  value,"  says  a  religious  journal, 
"  must  aim  at  a  thorough  reconstruction  of  the  whole  social 
fabric."  I  think  not.  Christianity  will  instinctively  destroy  all 
that  is  evil  in  any  society,  and  its  end  will  be  thorough  recon- 
struction of  the  whole  social  fabric.  But  that  is  the  far-off, 
ultimate  issue  of  missions,  not  their  immediate  aim.  This 
journal's  view  confuses  the  work  of  missions  with  the  whole  work 
of  Christianity.  The  work  of  missions  will  be  done  long  before 
these  results  have  been  attained,  and  the  foreign  missionary 
enterprise  must  refuse  to  accept  this  responsibility. 

In  the  second  place,  the  aim  of  missions  is  not  to  be  con- 
founded with  the  means  or  methods  employed  for  its  realisation. 
We  often  start  out  to  use  a  method  to  an  end  or  to  accomplish 
an  accepted  aim,  but  the  method  becomes  itself  the  end  and 
conceals  the  real  aim.  The  aim  may  be  difficult  and  the  method 
easy,  those  for  whom  we  work  may  be  averse  to  our  end  but 
eager  for  our  agency,  the  means  employed  may  be  in  them- 
selves beneficent ;  in  such  circumstances  we  easily  content  our- 
selves with  the  prosecution  of  our  methods,  allowing  our  aim 
to  fall  into  the  background  or  to  await  a  more  favourable  time. 
There  may  often  be  no  other  course  than  this  open  to  us.  In 
such  case,  we  need  only  to  make  sure  that  the  aim  is  still  there, 
that  the  methods  are  kept  true  to  it,  and  that  we  ourselves  have 
not  lost  our  loyalty  but  are  only  waiting  for  the  first  suitable 
hour.  But  we  must  not  be  as  that  ambassador  who  was  sent  to 
negotiate  a  treaty  of  union  and  bidden  to  use  every  friendly 
resource,  and  who  so  lost  himself  amid  his  resources  that  he 
came  back  with  good-will,  but  with  no  more.  The  maintenance 
of  hospitals  and  schools  is  not  the  aim  of  Christian  missions. 
They  are  the  methods  by  which  it  is  to  achieve  the  real  end. 
Preaching  is  not  the  supreme  aim  of  the  missionary.     That, 


60  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

too,  is  simply  a  method,  and  a  man  may  lose  himself  and  his 
aim  in  that  method  as  easily  as  in  any  other. 

What,  then,  is  the  supreme  and  determining  aim  of  foreign 
missions?  It  is  something  religious,  and  it  is  something  as  near 
the  vital  and  living  core  of  religion  as  can  possibly  be.  It 
must  include  that  and  as  little  beside  that  as  is  possible.  It 
is  to  make  Christ  known  to  the  world  with  a  view  to  real  results, 
for  time,  as  well  as  for  eternity,  and  to  the  incorporation  of 
these  results  in  living  national  character.  In  other  words,  the 
aim  of  missions  includes  three  things, — first,  the  proclamation 
of  Christ ;  second,  the  salvation  of  men,  and  third,  the  naturalisa- 
tion of  Christianity. 

Let  us  consider  each  of  these.  First,  it  is  the  aim  of  missions 
to  make  Jesus  Christ  known  to  the  world.  Some  will  say  that 
this  is  simple  enough.  Our  business  is  to  preach  the  Gospel. 
Yes,  but  what  is  the  Gospel  that  is  to  be  preached,  and  what 
is  it  to  preach  it?  The  problem  is  by  no  means  as  simple  as  it 
appears.  We  think  we  know  what  the  Gospel  was  which  Paul 
preached  and  which  constituted  the  message  of  the  Church  in 
the  missionary  expansion  of  the  first  two  centuries.  Harnack 
is  sure  that  the  one  living  God,  as  Creator,  Jesus  the  Saviour, 
the  resurrection  and  self-control  formed  the  four  conspicuous 
features  in  the  new  propaganda.  "  Along  with  this,  the  story 
of  Jesus  must  have  been  briefly  communicated  (in  the  statements 
of  Christology),  whilst  the  resurrection  was  generally  defined  as 
the  resurrection  of  the  flesh,  and  self-control  identified  with 
social  purity,  and  then  extended  to  include  renunciation  of  the 
world  and  mortification  of  the  flesh." — (Harnack,  "  Expansion 
of  Christianity,"  Vol.  I,  p.  m.)  The  facts  of  Christianity  re- 
main what  they  were,  and  men  can  state  them,  but  is  that 
preaching  the  Gospel,  is  that  making  Christ  known?  The 
problem  is  not  so  easy.  Those  who  have  tried  most  earnestly 
best  realise  the  difficulties.  "  The  moment  I  could  speak  the 
language,"  says  an  ingenious  missionary  to  Mohammedans,  "  and 
began  to  see  something  of  the  people,  man  after  man  would  come 
to  me,  all  with  the  same  question,  '  We  have  heard  a  great 
deal,  a  great  deal  of  Christian  teaching,  and  a  great  deal  about 


THE  MISSIONARY  AIM  AND  METHODS  61 

Jesus  Christ,  but  Sahib,  matlab  chist? '  which  may  be  trans- 
lated, '  What  is  the  point  of  it  all? '  " — (Malcolm,  "  Five  Years 
in  a  Persian  Town,"  p.  202.)  If  any  one  should  say  that  making 
Christ  known  is  simply  showing  to  others  the  beauty  of  His 
character,  that  is  no  simple  task.  The  late  Mr.  A.  G.  Jones, 
of  the  English  Baptist  Mission  in  Shantung,  one  of  the  freshest 
and  most  vigorous  minds  in  China,  said  that  even  that  task 
baffled  him,  and  Mr.  Townsend  said  some  years  ago  of  India: 

The  character  of  Christ  is  not,  I  am  convinced,  as  acceptable 
to  Indians  as  it  is  to  the  northern  races.  It  is  not  so  completely 
their  ideal,  because  it  is  not  so  visibly  supernatural,  so  completely 
beyond  any  point  which  they  can,  unassisted  by  divine  grace, 
hope  to  attain.  The  qualities  which  seemed  to  the  warriors  of 
Clovis  so  magnificently  divine,  the  self-sacrifice,  the  self-denial, 
the  resignation,  the  sweet  humility,  are  precisely  the  qualities  the 
germs  of  which  exist  in  the  Hindu.  He  seeks,  like  every  other 
man,  the  complement  of  himself,  and  not  himself  again,  and 
stands  before  Christ  at  first  comparatively  unattracted.  The  ideal 
in  his  mind  is  as  separate  as  was  the  ideal  in  the  Jews'  mind 
of  their  expected  Messiah,  and  though  the  ideals  of  Jew  and 
Hindu  are  different,  the  effect  is  in  both  cases  the  same — a 
passive,  dull  repulsion,  scarcely  to  be  overcome  save  by  the 
special  grace  of  God.  I  never  talked  frankly  with  a  Hindu 
in  whom  I  did  not  detect  this  feeling  to  be  one  inner  cause  of 
his  rejection  of  Christianity.  He  did  not  want  that  particular 
sublimity  of  character,  but  another,  something  more  of  the  sov- 
ereign and  legislator. 

The  character  of  Christ  wields  a  far  greater  attraction  in 
India  to-day.  But  preaching  the  Gospel,  making  Christ  known, 
is  something  far  more  than  describing  to  men  the  beauty  of  His 
character,  but  just  what  it  is  and  how  it  can  be  done  in  the 
truest  and  most  effective  way  are  questions  so  deep  that  they 
lift  the  missionary  enterprise  to  a  level  of  its  own.  Mr.  Jones 
keenly  felt,  as  all  true  missionaries  feel  the  burden  of  these 
questions. 

There  are  [said  he]  those  who  believe  the  true  course  is, 
without  further  preparation,  to  proclaim  and  declare  Christ,  His 
deity,  and  His  saving  work  of  atonement,  first  and  always,  to 


62  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

every  creature,  irrespective  of  the  hearer's  state  of  heart,  as 
the  true  sequence  of  truth,  as  the  Scriptural,  the  speediest,  and 
most  effective  way.  Now  this  has  been  done  on  a  vast  scale 
in  India  and  China,  with  a  sincerity,  perseverance,  and  zeal  that 
admits  of  no  question ;  by  men,  too,  that  were  both  pious  and 
spiritual,  and  in  a  way  that  compels  the  highest  admiration. 
The  one  fact,  however,  that  voices  itself  above  every  other,  is 
the  utter  disproportion  of  the  results  to  the  efforts,  and  it  is 
this  which  at  once  both  raises  doubts  and  compels  investigation 
as  to  the  correctness  of  this  principle  of  working.  I  believe 
with  all  my  heart  in  the  preaching  of  Jesus  Christ  and  His 
atonement  as  the  very  and  essential  truth  of  God;  but  I  believe, 
also,  it  is  utterly  useless,  profitless,  and  meaningless  unless  the 
existence  of  God,  the  rule  of  God,  the  reality  of  the  after-life, 
and  the  certainty  of  a  future  retribution  be,  to  some  extent, 
believed  by  the  inquiring  soul,  if  indeed  in  any  sense  inquiring 
at  all.  The  efficacy  of  the  Gospel  is  not  like  the  chemical  efficacy 
of  some  substances  on  other  substances,  as  the  efficacy  of  spells, 
or  passwords,  but  lies  in  its  spiritual  adaptation  for  bringing 
the  soul  to  be  in  an  attitude  of  harmony  with  God,  if  that  God 
be  known  and  that  harmony  desired.  .  .  .  The  question  is 
one  which  the  increasing  experience  of  the  Church  in  her  mis- 
sionary work  among  cultured  nations  increasingly  calls  attention 
to,  i.e.,  the  true  principles  and  right  method  of  evangelising  the 
heathen.  Faith  in  Jesus  is  the  best  of  all  evidence  when  a  man 
has  got  it,  but  as  to  how  he  is  to  be  helped  to  get  it,  and  how 
he  is  not  to  be  hindered  in  getting  it,  this  is  my  one  day's  con- 
tribution. Judge  not  according  to  the  appearance  or  the  letter, 
but  judge  righteous  judgment.  Idols  are  worshipped  and  false 
gods  trusted,  after  a  certain  fashion,  and  hold  their  own.  We 
do  not  want  Christ  worshipped  or  trusted  in  that  way,  but 
collaterally  with  an  internal  process  of  a  spiritual  character. 
That  process  seldom  results  from  mere  assertions  unless  they 
be  as  real  rays  of  light  entering  into  the  very  centre  of  a  man's 
heart  and  making  the  person  and  power  of  Jesus  Christ  a  living 
reality  to  the  soul.  I  do  not  for  a  moment  believe  that  the 
ordinary  view,  that  Christianity  fails  mostly  or  solely  for  want 
of  faith,  or  because  the  hearers  are  so  evil,  is  the  right  one. 
Nay,  it  often  fails,  even  under  fair  conditions,  because  we  so 
mar  it  in  the  preaching,  and  because  we  so  fail  to  demonstrate 
its  spirit  and  its  power. 

What   Mr.   Jones,   whose  tragic  death   was   an   untold   loss 
to  missions  in  China,  has  said  of  conditions  on  the  mission  field 


THE  MISSIONARY  AIM  AND  METHODS  63 

is  as  true  of  conditions  at  home.  The  fruit,  indeed,  is  greater 
there  than  here,  though  with  us  the  difficulties  are  infinitely- 
less,  for  we  have  the  ideas  to  build  upon.  He  forgets,  or  in 
his  stern  humility  ignores,  the  effectiveness  with  which  even  our 
stumbling  efforts  do  make  Christ  known.  He  passes  over  the 
great  fact  of  life  that  Christ  is  each  man's  head  and  will  find 
His  way  to  him.  But  his  words  express  clearly  the  difficulty 
and  the  necessity  of  the  primary  missionary  aim,  which  is  to 
bring  the  living  Christ  home  to  men. 

In  the  second  place,  the  aim  is  to  do  this  with  a  view  to 
results,  not  only  in  the  general  acquaintance  of  the  nations  with 
the  Christian  ideal,  but  also  in  the  salvation  of  individual  men. 
The  missionary  movement  may  not  absolve  itself  from  responsi- 
bility here.  It  may  not  say,  "  Our  aim  is  to  make  Christ  known, 
whether  they  will  hear  or  not.  The  results  are  with  God." 
There  is,  of  course,  a  measure  of  truth  in  this  view,  but  on  the 
other  hand,  if  there  are  no  results,  how  can  we  be  sure  that 
we  have  made  Christ  known  ?  We  believe  that  everywhere  there 
are  those  whom  in  His  exquisite  Oriental  speech  our  Lord 
called  His  sheep,  who,  when  they  hear  their  Shepherd's  voice, 
will  follow  Him.  If  none  respond,  how  can  we  be  sure  that 
any  have  heard?  We  are  to  aim  at  and  work  for  the  actual 
conversion  of  men,  and  not  be  content  with  witness-bearing, 
heedless  of  result  or  seed-sowing  for  future  harvest.  The  late 
Dr.  Ellinwood,  who  represented  a  view  of  missionary  effort 
which  gave  full  allowance  to  the  wider  aspects  of  the  work 
as  they  are  usually  called,  toward  the  close  of  his  life  felt  the 
importance  of  this  primary  work  of  missions  as  his  chief  burden. 

Another  thing  [he  said]  which  I  would  place  in  the  very 
forefront  among  the  impressions  which  have  grown  upon  my 
mind  is  this :  that  the  importance  of  our  work,  whether  in 
the  actual  contact  of  the  missionary  on  the  field  or  the  planning 
and  stimulus  of  the  work  here  at  home,  should  be  the  conversion 
of  men.  Do  you  ask  why  I  utter  such  a  truism  as  this?  I 
do  it  because  I  think  that  too  often  a  feeling  has  grown  up 
that  our  work  is  to  prepare  the  way  for  somebody  hereafter 
to  reap  the  harvest.  There  is  no  phrase  as  much  abused  as 
that  of  "  seed-sowing."     There  is  a  legitimate  sowing  of  the 


64  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

seed,  but  neither  the  phrase  nor  the  idea  should  be  made  a 
subterfuge  or  an  excuse  for  a  limp  and  self-contented  inefficiency. 
A  missionary  in  Benares  belonging  to  one  of  the  British  Societies 
once  told  me  that  he  had  preached  the  Gospel  in  that  city  ten 
years,  but  he  had  never,  so  far  as  he  knew,  been  the  means 
of  any  conversion,  and  when  I  showed  some  surprise  at  his 
apparent  freedom  from  concern,  he  said  that  it  was  his  business 
to  preach  the  Word, — he  really  had  nothing  to  do  with  results. 
Quite  different  was  the  feeling  of  Mr.  Hudson  Taylor,  when  in 
the  great  missionary  conference  of  1900  he  urged  the  mission- 
aries to  aim  at  the  conversion  of  men  at  once,  even  though  it 
might  be  the  first  and  possibly  the  only  opportunity,  and  he  gave 
instances  in  which  the  work  of  the  Spirit  had  thus  directly  owned 
the  message  and  made  it  effectual.  As  we  turn  back  to  the 
New  Testament,  I  think  we  find  that  that  was  very  much  the  way 
in  which  believers  were  expected  to  respond  when  Peter  and 
John  and  Stephen  and  Paul  proclaimed  to  them  the  message 
of  salvation.  I  once  heard  the  secretary  of  a  missionary  Board 
say  that  about  the  least  concern  of  all  to  the  missionary  was 
the  question  of  numbers  received  into  the  Church.  His  meaning 
was  good,  but  it  was  a  careless  and  one-sided  statement.  It 
must  be  admitted  that  sometimes  a  great  and  exclusive  emphasis 
is  put  upon  the  statistics  of  church  membership.  But  dissent 
from  this  view  has,  I  think,  been  carried  too  far  and  indicates 
a  lack  of  that  travail  for  souls  of  which  Paul  speaks.  I  am 
fully  persuaded  that  the  unit  of  measurement  in  preaching  the 
Gospel  of  reconciliation  is  the  individual  soul. 

Was  this  not  what  Jesus  sought  when  He  came  here  to 
win  men?  Was  this  not  what  He  charged  His  disciples  to 
do,  namely,  to  make  disciples  of  others,  even  of  all  nations? 
Was  not  this  what  Paul  sought,  the  persuasion  of  men  to  believe 
in  Christ  and  to  follow  Him  in  His  Church?  I  certainly  believe 
that  this  is  the  aim  of  foreign  missions  and  of  every  agency  em- 
ployed by  foreign  missions.  I  know  that  there  are  some  who  hold 
a  different  view.  One  of  the  most  honoured  and  distinguished 
leaders  in  educational  work  on  the  foreign  field  set  forth  a  dif- 
ferent view  some  years  ago  in  a  lecture  to  his  students  at  Madras. 
"  We  have  institutions  for  education  around  us,"  said  Dr.  Miller, 
"  which  deliberately  decline  to  turn  the  thoughts  of  those  trained 
in  them  toward  every  divine  purpose, — which  are  not  intended 
to  suggest  any  thoughts  beyond  those  that  belong  to  the  brief 


THE  MISSIONARY  AIM  AND  METHODS  65 

lives  of  individual  men  on  earth.  We  have  other  institutions 
which,  working  rather  on  the  Greek  and  Roman  ideal  than  on 
Christ's,  make  it  their  one  overmastering  aim  to  bring  men  over 
from  other  schemes  of  life,  and  to  place  them  within  the  Chris- 
tian fold.  With  neither  of  these  classes  of  schools  and  colleges 
have  I  any  quarrel.  .  .  .  But  you,  amid  such  imperfection  in 
those  who  trained  you  and  yet  not  wholly  without  success,  have 
been  trained  differently.  .  .  .  To  you, — if  you  have  at  all  re- 
ceived the  Spirit  of  your  training — to  you  it  is  a  familiar  thought, 
nay,  it  is  the  guiding  thought  of  all,  that  while  God's  moral 
work,  like  all  His  works,  is  organised  around  a  centre,  it  is 
yet  something  wider  far  than  any  Church  or  system  or  race, 
nay,  that  it  embraces  every  land  and  age,  and  extends  to  every 
member  of  the  human  family."  These  words  raise  a  great  ques- 
tion and  embody  truth,  and,  I  think,  also  some  error.  I  quote 
them  now  as  setting  forth  an  aim  which  we  do  not  regard  as 
the  great  aim  of  missions,  and  dismissing  as  Greek  and  Roman, 
rather  than  Christian,  what  we  do  regard  as  the  supreme  aim 
and  chief  business  of  the  missionary  enterprise,  namely,  making 
Christ  known  to  individual  men  with  a  view  to  their  open  personal 
acceptance  of  Him  as  their  only  Lord  and  Saviour.  This  aim 
is  sometimes  condemned  by  the  supposedly  opprobrious  term  of 
proselytising.  But  what  is  meant  by  proselytising?  If  it  means 
to  take  a  good  follower  of  one  religion  and  to  make  him  into 
a  bad  follower  of  another,  then  it  goes  without  saying  that  it 
is  not  worth  while.  But  if  to  win  a  man  to  Christ,  to  take 
an  adherent  of  any  other  religion  or  a  man  of  no  religion  and 
make  him  a  true  disciple  of  Christ — if  that  be  proselytising,  then 
that,  as  we  understand  it,  is  exactly  what  the  work  of  foreign 
missions  aims  to  do. 

This  also,  as  those  who  have  tried  it  know  best,  is  no  easy 
task.  Robert  Morrison  wrought  seven  years  before  his  first 
convert  was  won.  To  make  Christ  known  in  a  way  that  satisfies 
the  heart  and  mind  of  the  preacher  is  a  great  achievement. 
To  make  Christ  known  in  a  way  that  convinces  the  heart  and 
mind  and  will  of  the  hearer  is  a  greater  one.  Only  the  divine 
Spirit,  Who  we  believe  is  at  work  in  the  enterprise,  can  effect 


66  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

either.  He  can  effect  and  is  daily  effecting  both.  For  the  work 
is  simpler,  as  well  as  more  difficult,  than  it  appears.  In  many 
ways,  by  many  doors,  on  many  angles  of  the  infinite  and  ade- 
quate truth  of  God  in  Christ  is  the  Spirit  through  men  reaching 
men  and  making  them  the  open  and  fearless  followers  of  the 
Saviour. 

The  third  element  of  the  missionary  aim  is  the  naturalisation 
of  Christianity  in  the  non-Christian  lands.  Its  aim  is  not  to 
impose  our  Western  systems  of  theology  or  our  Western  forms 
of  Church  government  upon  the  converts  who  may  be  gathered 
upon  the  mission  field.  It  is  to  make  Christ  known  to  these 
peoples,  to  bring  together  those  who  accept  him,  and  to  estab- 
lish them  in  indigenous  organisations  which  will  take  their 
own  forms  and  come  to  their  own  statements  of  the  truth  of 
Christianity,  as  wrought  out  in  their  own  study  of  the  Bible 
and  their  own  Christian  experience.  It  is  not  the  aim  of  missions 
to  denationalise  those  who  become  Christian  disciples,  to  inter- 
fere with  styles  of  dress  or  modes  of  life,  to  give  Occidental 
institutions  to  them  or  to  Westernise  their  minds  or  hearts. 
It  is  their  aim  to  carry  to  all  the  world  the  universal  elements 
of  the  one  adequate  religion,  the  knowledge  of  the  one  Saviour 
of  men,  and  to  secure  that  permanent  and  effective  perpetuation 
and  that  adequate  apprehension  of  the  truth  by  men  which  are 
possible  only  in  the  corporate  association  of  the  Church,  one 
over  all  the  earth,  and  yet  adapted  to  the  genius  and  needs  of 
each  people. 

It  is  in  this  adaptation  of  her  missions  to  national  conditions 
that  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  is  supposed  to  have  been  spe- 
cially wise.  The  supposition  is  erroneous.  The  great  mistake 
of  the  Roman  Church  has  been  in  the  iron  imposition  of  her 
forms,  both  of  doctrine  and  of  institution,  absorbing  much  evil, 
it  is  true,  in  such  adaptation  as  she  has  permitted,  but  crushing 
out  spontaneity  and  life,  and  drawing  everything  under  an  essen- 
tially alien  rule.  "  It  presents,"  says  Professor  Moore,  "  the 
singular  contrast  of  being  the  faith  which  professes  to  differ 
most  absolutely  from  all  others,  yet  visibly  differing  very  little 
from  the  old  faiths  of  its  converts,  and  giving  them  but  a  con- 


THE  MISSIONARY  AIM  AND  METHODS  67 

fused  sense  of  anything  beyond  an  external  allegiance  to  a  punc- 
tilious routine  for  which  it  stands.  The  Roman  Church,  there- 
fore, represents  the  phenomenon  of  the  naturalisation  of  Chris- 
tianity in  the  Orient  in  a  form  in  which  it  is  only  too  easy  to 
say  that,  if  this  is  what  is  meant  by  naturalisation  of  Christianity, 
then  the  less  we  have  to  do  with  it  the  better." — (E.  C.  Moore, 
in  the  Harvard  Theological  Review,  July,  1908,  p.  273.)  Cath- 
olic writers  admit  the  fact  of  their  alien  ideals.  "  Even  at 
Peking,"  writes  one  of  them,  "  where  there  are  old  Christian 
families  of  three  hundred  years'  standing,  the  Chinese  priests 
require  the  support  of  a  European  missionary.  .  .  .  The  mis- 
sionaries are  of  opinion  that  it  is  only  after  four  generations  that 
the  Chinese  can  be  thoroughly  imbued  with  the  spirit  of  the 
Catholic  faith.  For  this  reason,  only  Chinamen  whose  families 
have  been  Catholics  for  two  or  three  centuries  are  admitted  to 
the  priesthood.  Converts  of  a  recent  date  are  never  accepted 
without  a  special  dispensation,  which  is  seldom  applied  for,  and 
which  is  still  more  seldom  granted." — (Kelly,  "  Another  China," 
p.  74.)  The  Roman  Catholic  aim,  in  other  words,  is  the  im- 
portation of  a  foreign  ecclesiastical  system.  In  South  America 
men  will  tell  you  frankly  that  the  greatest  evils  which  ever 
befell  the  continent  were  its  discovery  by  Spaniards  and  the 
imposition  of  an  alien  religious  institution  which  was  not  a 
fountain  of  indigenous  life. 

Now  it  is  charged  against  Protestant  missions  that  they  have 
made  in  principle  the  same  mistake  as  Roman  Catholics,  and 
have  simply  carried  out  into  the  non-Christian  nations  a  Western 
set  of  ideals,  body  of  social  usages,  and  form  of  religious  or- 
ganisation. Let  us  listen  to  the  charges.  "  The  Christian  re- 
ligion," says  Arminius  Vambery,  "  may  in  the  beginning  have 
borne  many  traces  of  Asiaticism ;  but  in  its  further  development 
it  has  decidedly  adapted  itself  to  Western  views ;  and  as  an 
amalgamation  of  Aryan  and  Semitic  ideas,  as  Seeley  expresses 
it,  has  become  a  European  religion  par  excellence.  As  such, 
it  is  a  development  foreign  to  the  Asiatic  mind ;  a  faith  which 
does  not  coincide  with  his  tastes  and  conception  of  life,  and 
an  anonymous  author  in  the  Contemporary  Review  is  about  right 


68  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

when  he  concludes  his  instructive  article  entitled  '  Islam  and 
Christianity  in  India,'  with  the  remark :  '  Mohammedan  prosely- 
tism  succeeds  in  India  because  it  leaves  its  converts  Asiatics 
still.  Christian  proselytism  fails  in  India  because  it  strives  to 
make  of  its  converts  English  middle-class  men.  That  is  the 
truth  in  a  nutshell,  whether  we  choose  to  accept  it  or  not.'  " — 
(Vambery,  "  Western  Culture  in  Eastern  Lands,"  Ch.  VIII.) 
Hear,  also,  Mr.  Townsend,  who  is  the  anonymous  writer  whom 
Mr.  Vambery  quotes : 

The  missionaries  are  Europeans  [he  says]  divided  from  the 
people  by  a  barrier  as  strong  as  that  which  separates  a  Chinaman 
from  a  Londoner,  by  race,  by  colour,  by  dress,  by  incurable  dif- 
ferences of  thought,  of  habit,  of  taste,  and  of  language.  The 
last  named  the  missionary  sometimes,  though  by  no  means  always, 
overcomes,  but  the  remaining  barriers  he  cannot  overcome,  for 
they  are  rooted  in  his  very  nature,  and  he  does  not  try.  He  never 
becomes  an  Indian,  or  anything  which  an  Indian  could  mistake 
for  himself;  the  influence  of  civilisation  is  too  strong  for  him. 
He  cannot  help  desiring  that  his  flock  should  become  "  civilised  " 
as  well  as  Christians;  he  understands  no  civilisation  not  Euro- 
pean, and  by  unwearied  admonition,  by  governing,  by  teaching, 
by  setting  up  all  manner  of  useful  industries,  he  tries  to  bring 
them  up  to  his  narrow  ideal.  That  is,  he  becomes  a  pastor  on 
the  best  English  model ;  part  preacher,  part  schoolmaster,  part 
ruler ;  always  doing  his  best,  always  more  or  less  successful,  but 
always  with  an  eye  to  a  false  end — the  Europeanisation  of  the 
Asiatic — and  always  acting  through  the  false  method  of  develop- 
ing the  desire  of  imitation.  There  is  the  curse  of  the  whole 
system,  whether  of  missionary  work  or  of  education  in  India. 
The  missionary,  like  the  educationist,  cannot  resist  the  desire 
to  make  his  pupils  English,  to  teach  them  English  literature, 
English  science,  English  knowledge ;  often — as  in  the  case  of  the 
vast  Scotch  missionary  colleges,  establishments  as  large  as  uni- 
versities, and  as  successful  in  teaching — through  the  medium 
of  English  alone.  He  wants  to  saturate  Easterns  with  the  West. 
The  result  is  that  the  missionary  becomes  an  excellent  pastor 
or  an  efficient  schoolmaster  instead  of  a  proselytiser,  and  that 
his  converts  or  their  children  or  the  thousands  of  pagan  lads 
he  teaches  become  in  exact  proportion  to  his  success  a  hybrid 
caste,  not  quite  European,  not  quite  Indian,  with  the  originality 
killed  out  of  them,  with  self-reliance  weakened,  with  all  mental 


THE  MISSIONARY  AIM  AND  METHODS  69 

aspirations  wrenched  violently  in  a  direction  which  is  not  their 
own.  It  is  as  if  Englishmen  were  trained  by  Chinamen  to  be- 
come not  only  Buddhists,  but  Chinese.  The  first  and  most 
visible  result  is  a  multiplication  of  Indians  who  know  English, 
but  are  not  English,  either  in  intellectual  ways  or  in  morals ;  and 
the  second  is  that,  after  eighty  years  of  effort,  no  great  native 
missionary  has  arisen,  that  no  great  Indian  Church  has  developed 
itself  on  lines  of  its  own,  and  that  the  ablest  missionaries  say 
sorrowfully  that  white  supervision  is  still  needed,  and  that  if 
they  all  retired,  the  work  might  even  now  be  undone.  .  .  . 
Christianity  in  a  new  people  must  develop  civilisation  for 
itself,  not  be  smothered  by  it,  still  less  be  exhausted  in  the  im- 
possible  effort  to  accrete  to  itself  a  civilisation  from  the  outside. 
Natives  of  India,  when  they  are  Christians,  will  be  and  ought 
to  be  Asiatics  still — that  is,  as  unlike  English  rectors  or  English 
dissenting  ministers  as  it  is  possible  for  men  of  the  same  creed 
to  be,  and  the  effort  to  squeeze  them  into  those  moulds  not  only 
wastes  power,  but  destroys  the  vitality  of  the  original  material. 

These  are  faithful  words,  and  we  are  saying  them  ourselves. 
"  One  going  into  a  Hindu  or  Chinese  Christian  Church,"  says 
Professor  Moore  on  his  return  from  his  missionary  visitation, 
"  is  positively  astounded  to  see  how  completely  some  of  the  con- 
verts represent,  seemingly  to  the  minutest  detail,  the  type  with 
which  we  are  familiar  in  the  devout  life  of  our  Churches  here 
at  home.  .  .  .  Their  Christianity,  real  as  it  is,  is  still  exotic. 
.  .  .  Christianity  is  not  yet  naturalised.  Such  converts  ex- 
plain how  their  compatriots  may  come  to  look  upon  the  Christian 
as  denationalised,  and  on  conversion  as  equivalent  to  denationali- 
sation." 

Now  in  the  face  of  all  this,  we  repeat  that  the  aim  of  foreign 
missions  is  just  what  we  have  declared  it  to  be.  It  is  the  naturali- 
sation of  Christianity,  both  as  doctrine  and  institution  in  the 
foreign  nations.  But  this  is  no  more  easy  than  the  work  of 
making  Christ  known  or  the  work  of  winning  men  to  His 
discipleship.  The  racial  chasm  exists.  It  is  that  chasm  which 
creates  the  difficulty.  Paul  did  not  experience  it.  He  was  a 
Roman.  Wherever  he  went  he  was  in  his  own  country  and 
among  his  own  people.  Everywhere  he  found  Jews  and  prose- 
lytes   to   Judaism.      Everywhere    he    found   Greek   culture    and 


7o  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

Greek  forms  of  thought.  Everywhere  he  was  under  Roman 
law  and  under  Roman  social  institutions.  Our  missions  are 
foreign  missions,  not  in  the  sense  of  Paul's,  but  in  the  sense 
that  Paul's  would  have  been  if  he  had  gone  to  India  or  to 
China.  We  cannot  go  into  the  non-Christian  world  as  other  than 
we  are  or  with  anything  else  than  that  which  we  have.  Even 
when  we  have  done  our  best  to  disentangle  the  universal  truth 
from  the  Western  form  that  it  may  find  the  Eastern  heart,  we 
know  that  we  have  not  done  it.  "  We  are  there,"  says  Dr. 
Gibson,  "  to  teach  the  Word  of  God,  to  plant  in  their  minds 
ideas  which  are  to  be  the  universal  possession  of  all  God's 
people.  We  are  perhaps  hardly  aware  how  much  our  own  na- 
tional temperament,  our  own  upbringing,  and  the  schools  of 
theology  from  which  we  come,  tend  to  shape  and  colour  our 
teaching.  It  requires  a  constant  effort  of  watchfulness  to  see 
to  it  that  we  offer  to  those  under  our  care  the  pure,  uncoloured, 
universal  essence  of  our  Lord's  teaching,  and  not  the  essentially 
Scottish  or  Western  theology  and  Gospel." — (Gibson,  "  Mission 
Problems  and  Mission  Methods,"  pp.  282-286.)  We  are  not 
agreed  as  to  the  essential  and  universal  elements  of  Christianity 
here.  How  great  is  their  problem  who  go  out  to  plant  the 
faith  in  other  lands! 

And  even  in  the  case  of  elements  of  Christianity  which  are 
obviously  and  concededly  universal,  do  not  think  that  it  is  easy 
to  find  a  home  for  them  in  all  lands — the  sinless  holiness  of 
God  in  India,  the  fatherly  goodness  of  God  in  Islam,  the  in- 
dividuality of  the  soul  in  Japan,  the  personality  of  God  in  all 
the  Buddhist  lands.  "  They  will  readily  understand,"  said  a 
Japanese  speaker  in  Tokyo,  several  years  ago,  referring  to  his 
countrymen,  "  if  you  say  that  God  is  Creator  or  that  Heaven 
is  order,  but  a  God  with  personality  is  an  idea  hard  for  them 
to  grasp.  Even  among  Christians  (Japanese)  of  the  present 
time,  the  number  who  have  really  comprehended  this  personal 
God  is  comparatively  small.  ...  A  ready  understanding  will 
be  met  with  if  Christ  is  said  to  be  a  man  of  perfection  or  per- 
fect righteousness  or  the  like.  But  the  divine  nature  of  Christ 
they  do  not  readily  accept.   .    .    .   The  weakness  of  mankind  they 


THE  MISSIONARY  AIM  AND  METHODS  71 

well  know.  To  make  them  take  the  next  step,  to  grasp  the  sin- 
fulness of  sin,  is  the  great  problem.  ...  To  make  these  funda- 
mental truths  clear  to  the  present  generation  is  a  great  and 
agonising  labour." — (Watson,  "  The  Future  of  Japan,"  p.  328.) 
The  introduction  of  Western  elements  in  our  intercourse  with 
the  non-Christian  peoples  is  inevitable.  The  Christian  missions 
are  not  the  only  agencies  at  work  upon  the  world  which  carry 
their  treasure  in  earthen  vessels,  or  which  have  difficulty  in 
planting  their  contribution  as  a  living  power.  Let  us  hear  the 
same  witnesses  we  have  already  heard — first,  Vambery,  speaking 
of  Western  political  policy  in  Asia : 

A  deeper  insight  into  the  actual  relationship  between  East 
and  West,  a  thorough  testing  of  the  ethnical  characteristics  and 
the  ethical  conditions  of  the  elements  that  had  to  be  reformed, 
was  seldom  thought  necessary ;  it  was  enough  to  have  laid  out 
the  programme  of  the  reforms  and  innovations  which  were  to 
take  place,  and  afterwards  we  wondered  why  the  Asiatic,  dressed 
in  clothes  far  too  big,  too  wide,  and  too  heavy  for  his  corporeal 
dimensions,  should  drag  himself  along  so  painfully  and  labori- 
ously. It  was  an  initial  mistake  both  on  the  part  of  the  Euro- 
pean master  and  of  the  Oriental  pupil,  that  the  modern  doctrines 
were  not  made  more  compatible  with  the  local,  ethnical,  and 
ethical  conditions,  and  also  more  popular.  If  many  of  the  new 
customs  and  notions,  which  must  have  appeared  monstrous  to 
the  Moslem  mind,  had  been  made  a  little  more  attractive,  the 
transition  would  have  been  easier.  But  Europe  has  never  taken 
the  trouble  to  enquire  into  these  matters,  and  the  Oriental  does 
not  understand  such  things ;  the  several  conditions  of  the  two 
worlds  have  not  been  sufficiently  taken  into  consideration,  and 
from  the  consequences  of  these  initial  mistakes  the  Islamic  world, 
and  Turkey  in  particular,  suffers  to  this  day. 

And   next,    Mr.    Townsend: 

English  education  in  India  may  remain  sterile  for  all  national 
purposes.  It  is  not  a  pleasant  thought,  but  it  is  an  unavoidable 
one,  that  the  conquest  of  the  east  Aryans  by  the  west  Aryans, 
though  it  has  brought  such  marvellous  blessings  in  the  way  of 
peace  and  order  and  material  prosperity,  though  it  has  given  to 
millions,  as  Mr.  Grant  Duff  says,  all  the  results  of  political 
evolution  without  the  wearying  struggle  for  them,  may  have 


72  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

brought  also  evils  which  overbalance,  or  almost  overbalance,  all 
its  gifts.  Not  much  is  gained  to  the  world  because  under  the 
shadow  of  the  Empire  Bengalees  increase  like  flies  on  a  windless 
day.  It  is  not  time  yet  for  conclusions,  for  the  work  of  con- 
quest has  but  just  ended,  and  that  of  sowing  seed  has  just  begun; 
but  that  decay  of  varieties  of  energy,  that  torpor  of  the  higher 
intellectual  life,  that  pause  in  the  application  of  art  knowledge, 
from  architecture  down  to  metal  work  and  pottery,  which  have 
been  synchronous  with  our  rule  in  India,  these  are  to  the  philo- 
sophic observer  melancholy  symptoms.  Why  is  not  the  world 
yet  richer  for  an  Indian  brain  ?  There  was  a  Roman  peace  once 
round  the  Mediterranean,  under  which  originality  so  died  away 
that  it  is  doubtful  whether,  but  for  the  barbarian  invasion,  society 
would  not  have  stereotyped  itself,  and  even  Christianity  have 
grown  fossil ;  and  our  rule,  much  nobler  though  its  motive  and 
its  methods  be,  may  be  accompanied  by  the  same  decay.  In 
the  two  hundred  years  during  which  Spaniards  have  ruled  in 
the  New  World  but  one  Indian  name  has  reached  Europe,  and 
Juarez  was  only  a  politician.  We  have  only  to  hope  and  to 
persevere ;  but  it  is  impossible,  when  the  results  are  from  time 
to  time  summed  up  by  cool  observers  like  the  Governor  of 
Madras,  not  to  feel  a  chilling  doubt.  We  think  little  of  the 
political  childishness  of  educated  natives  on  which  Mr.  Grant 
Duff  is  so  serenely  sarcastic,  for  that  is  a  mere  symptom  of 
unrest,  possibly  healthy  unrest ;  and  we  utterly  disagree  with 
him  in  his  assertion  that  only  a  wealthy  community  can  be  well 
governed,  holding  Switzerland  to  be  better  governed  than  France ; 
but  the  want  of  spontaneous  effort  in  all  directions,  the  limita- 
tion of  ambition  to  a  salary  from  the  State,  seem  to  us  symptoms 
either  of  intellectual  torpor  or  intellectual  despair.  We  know 
quite  well  the  tendency  of  Asia  to  stereotype  herself,  but  we 
had  hoped  that  British  dominion  would  revivify  her;  and  as  yet 
— except  possibly  in  the  important  domain  of  law,  a  reverence 
for  which  is  slowly  filtering  down — the  signs  are  very  few.  The 
Codes  will,  as  Mr.  Grant  Duff  believes,  materially  influence 
Indian  thought ;  but  then,  the  Codes  were  the  work  not  of  East- 
ern Aryans,  but  of  those  who  conquered  them.  We  want  original 
Indian  work ;  and  as  yet  we  have  only  men  who  will  take  any 
post,  provided  that  its  salary  is  guaranteed  by  the  State  and 
its  work  ordered  and  controlled  regularly  from  above. 

Christian  missions  are  not  alone  in  this  difficulty.  The  diffi- 
culty, moreover,  lies  more  with  the  material  than  with  the  move- 
ment.    The  obstacles  to  the  naturalisation  of  Christianity  do 


THE  MISSIONARY  AIM  AND  METHODS  73 

not  reside  in  any  reluctance  of  the  Christian  missions  to  recog- 
nise this  as  their  aim  so  much  as  in  the  imitativeness  of  the 
East.  The  new  public  buildings  of  Asia,  the  new  furniture  in 
her  palaces,  the  dress  of  her  modern  statesmen,  the  new  things 
which  she  is  spontaneously  taking  on  are  copies  of  the  West. 
The  exotic  appearance  of  the  new  religious  forms  is  not  peculiar 
to  religion.  Asia  of  her  own  accord  is  importing  the  West.  The 
missionary  movement  would  fain  see  far  less  of  imitation  and 
far  more  inward  acceptance  of  the  real  principle  of  a  new  life. 
Our  lament  is  not  that  the  Eastern  Churches  are  thinking  for 
themselves,  but  that  they  are  not  thinking  for  themselves,  that 
they  are  not  working  out  fresh  theological  statements  on  the 
basis  of  an  adequate  critical  study  of  the  growth  of  Christian 
doctrine,  a  new  search  of  the  Scriptures,  and  their  own  new 
experience  of  God  in  Christ.  The  missionary  movement  is  left 
to  bear  too  great  a  burden.  Its  aim  is  to  be  rid  of  this  burden, 
to  build  up  native  Churches  which  will  themselves  carry  this 
burden,  which  will  deal  with  their  own  apologetic  problems, 
work  out  their  own  institutions,  support  their  own  activities, 
and  evangelise  their  own  lands ;  in  one  word,  to  establish  in- 
dependent, national  Churches. 

In  realising  this  aim,  however,  many  things  will  of  necessity 
be  done  that  will  have  to  be  undone.  No  one  can  foretell  what 
forms  of  thought  and  what  types  of  organisation  will  be  developed 
by  any  national  genius  when  wrought  upon  and  wrought  in  by 
the  living  principles  of  the  Gospel.  The  life  will  grow  in  these 
lands  as  it  has  grown  elsewhere.  What  it  had  to  borrow  at 
the  beginning  it  will  throw  off.  It  will  pass  through  many 
phases.  For  generations  it  may  have  far  more  to  learn  from 
us  than  we  from  it.  Can  its  early  stages  be  otherwise  than 
imitative?  They  are  very  certain,  in  some  lands,  especially  in 
a  land  like  China,  steeped  in  its  Confucian  moralism,  and  Japan, 
destitute  of  the  idea  of  personality,  to  have  a  very  inadequate 
sense  of  sin.  Dr.  Gibson  has  described  for  us  clearly  and  sym- 
pathetically in  his  book  the  type  of  Christianity  developed  in 
a  field  where  missionaries  have,  nevertheless,  sought  earnestly  to 
naturalise  the  new  religion : 


74  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

It  is  difficult  to  characterise  with  accuracy  the  prevalent  type 
of  Christianity  which  we  find  on  our  mission  field.  There  is 
a  great  deal  of  simple  faith,  of  belief  in  prayer,  and  there  is 
at  least  a  very  frequent  acknowledgment,  if  not  a  very  pro- 
found sense,  of  the  working  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  The  great 
defect  which  probably  all  missionaries  in  China  feel,  is  the  lack 
in  the  native  Church  of  a  keen  sense  of  sin.  The  natural  con- 
science has  not,  of  course,  lost  wholly  its  appreciation  of  the 
distinctions  between  right  and  wrong,  but  sin  in  the  Christian 
sense,  and  still  more  an  adequate  conception  of  the  guilt  of  sin, 
are  things  wholly  unknown  to  the  non-Christian  Chinese,  and 
which  only  come  very  slowly  to  the  consciousness  even  of  the 
Christians.  I  have  said  that  new  converts  are  generally  brought 
in  by  the  example  and  the  testimony  of  native  Christians  in 
private  life,  and  so  far  as  their  conversion  is  a  matter  of  doc- 
trinal conviction,  I  believe  experience  shows  that  the  great 
majority  of  those  who  accept  the  Christian  faith  do  so,  not 
because  of  conviction  of  personal  sin,  but  because  they  have 
grasped  the  idea  of  the  obvious  helplessness  of  the  idols,  and 
the  folly  rather  than  the  sin  of  worshipping  them.  From  this 
position  they  attain  to  some  knowledge  and  belief  in  the  living 
and  true  God,  but  they  seem  seldom  to  realise  that  their  long 
alienation  from  Him  has  involved  any  guilt.  They  have  com- 
mitted a  mistake,  perhaps ;  they  have  been  unhappily  left  in  the 
dark ;  but  now  that  they  have  come  to  know  God  the  past  per- 
haps is  too  easily  forgotten,  and  there  is  always  a  too  superficial 
gladness  in  their  new  possession  of  the  truth,  which  leads  them 
away  from  that  kind  of  self-questioning  which  might  have  led 
them  to  a  deeper  sense  of  sin.  The  state  of  mind  has  its  ad- 
vantages and  its  drawbacks.  On  the  one  hand,  it  gives  a  fresh- 
ness, simplicity,  and  freedom  to  their  testimony  to  the  Gospel. 
They  have  no  tendency  to  make  the  way  of  salvation  seem  hard 
to  those  who  are  outside.  They  reduce  the  Gospel  to  its  simplest 
elements,  and  seek  to  lead  men  to  it  by  the  easiest  paths.  It 
may  be  that  this  is  a  right  and  needful  stage  in  the  early  history 
of  a  Christian  Church,  but  we  who  have  been  brought  up  in 
an  older  Christian  life  often  long  to  see  a  deeper  conception 
of  spiritual  things,  and  a  larger  sense  of  what  is  involved  in 
the  transition  from  death  to  life.  One  is  often  tempted  to  ask 
what  the  Christian  religion  is  as  it  presents  itself  to  the  con- 
sciousness of  many  of  our  Christian  people  in  China.  Occa- 
sional utterances  on  their  part  give  one  glimpses  of  a  system 
of  Christian  ideas  some  of  which  are  strange  enough,  and  many 
of  which,  though  true  and  sound  in  themselves,  differ  widely 


THE  MISSIONARY  AIM  AND  METHODS  75 

as  regards  emphasis  and  balance  from  the  Christian  system  as 
it  presents  itself  to  our  minds.  Hence  arises  the  profoundly 
interesting  question  how  Christian  life  and  theology  are  likely 
to  develop  themselves  in  a  young  Church  like  that  of  China, 
growing  up  amongst  a  people  who  are  themselves  the  outcome 
of  an  ancient  civilisation  and  intellectual  life. 

A  Christian  experience  like  this  is  not  prepared  to  make 
any  great  contribution  to  theology  or  to  the  experimental  under- 
standing of  our  faith.  It  is  merely  the  replica  of  a  frame  of 
mind  very  common  among  us  in  the  West,  a  frame  of  mind 
capable  of  subtracting  from,  but  not  of  adding  to,  the  race's 
apprehension  of  the  fulness  of  God  in  Christ.  And  in  the 
naturalisation  of  Christianity  we  must  be  prepared  not  only  for 
such  subtraction,  but  also  for  many  excesses.  The  Taiping 
rebellion  is  an  illustration  of  what  an  indigenous  interpretation 
of  Christianity,  unguided  by  the  maturer  experience  of  the  West 
and  divorced  from  organic  relation  with  the  historic  Christian 
tradition,  may  produce.  It  will  be  no  strange  thing  if  the 
Hindu  consciousness  runs  off  into  wilder  and  less  recoverable 
wreckage. 

The  aim  of  the  missionary  movement,  as  we  have  now  defined 
it,  i.e.,  to  make  Christ  known  to  the  world  with  a  view  to  real 
results  in  the  salvation  of  individuals  and  their  organisation  into 
living  native  Churches,  is,  accordingly,  not  an  easy  aim,  but  it  is 
simple  and  coherent,  and  it  is  practicable.  It  is  the  aim  of  the 
mission  enterprise  to  make  Christ  known  to  men  with  a  view 
to  making  men  disciples  of  Christ.  This  means  more  than  induc- 
ing them,  while  still  remaining  Hindus  or  Mohammedans,  to  take 
a  broader  view  of  God's  moral  government  and  His  education 
of  the  human  race.  It  means  their  acceptance  of  Christ  as  their 
Saviour  and  Lord,  as  the  full  revelation  of  God  and  the  Redeemer 
from  sin,  and  their  open  enlistment  in  His  service. 

The  aim  of  foreign  missions  is  not,  therefore,  the  civilisation 
of  the  world,  any  mere  change  in  men's  habits  of  life,  any 
mere  enlargement  of  men's  knowledge.  A  multitude  of  agencies 
are  operating  on  the  world  in  behalf  of  human  progress.  Some 
are  doing  harm;  some,  mingled  harm  and  good;  some,  good. 


76  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

The  deepest  and  purest  of  these  is  the  force  of  Christianity 
expressed  to  the  non-Christian  world,  for  the  most  part,  in 
the  enterprise  of  missions.  Every  motive  which  interests  men 
in  the  good  of  their  fellows  should  dispose  men  to  advance  this 
enterprise,  but  the  aim  of  the  enterprise  is  not  the  civilisation 
of  the  world. 

Neither  is  it  the  conversion  of  the  world.  We  believe  that 
some  day  Jesus  Christ  is  to  rule  over  all  the  earth,  that  every 
knee  will  bow  and  every  tongue  confess  that  He  is  God  to 
the  glory  of  God  the  Father,  but  foreign  missions  finished  their 
work  in  Scotland  and  the  United  States  before  that  day  was 
reached,  and  they  will  finish  their  work  everywhere  else  in  the 
world  before  that  day  will  come.  The  foreign  missionary  enter- 
prise is  not  coterminous  in  place  or  time  with  the  Church.  Its 
business  is  a  strictly  limited  business.  It  is  to  plant  Christianity 
as  a  living  power  in  each  non-Christian  land,  develop  there  a 
Church  which  will  have  a  life  of  its  own,  and  assume  itself  the 
burden  of  responsibility  for  the  evangelisation  of  its  own  nation. 
For  a  time  longer  or  shorter,  the  missionary  enterprise  must 
remain  to  co-operate  with  the  Church,  and  will  then  pass  on 
into  regions  beyond,  if  there  be  yet  regions  beyond,  while  further 
aid  will  be  given,  if  needed,  and  under  expedient  arrangements, 
by  the  Churches  of  Christ,  as  by  equal  to  equal  in  a  common 
task. 

This  does  not  dissolve  the  obligation  expressed  in  the  phrase, 
"  the  evangelisation  of  the  world  in  this  generation."  That 
phrase  embodies  the  solemn  duty  of  the  Christian  Church. 
Every  man  has  a  right  to  know  of  Christ.  Every  man  can  be 
made  to  know  of  Christ.  There  are  old  men  who  will  die 
before  the  Church  can  reach  them,  but  it  remains  true,  none 
the  less,  as  a  rough  statement  of  fact,  that  we  can,  if  we  will, 
make  Christ  known  to  all  the  world  in  this  generation.  No  other 
work  will  need  to  be  left  undone.  No  interest  will  suffer.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  resolute  effort  of  the  Church,  through  all 
the  channels  by  which  she  can  act  upon  the  world  to  make 
Christ  known  to  every  creature,  would  involve  that  very  access 
and  release  of  power,  that  very  rediscovery  of  the  living  God, 


THE  MISSIONARY  AIM  AND  METHODS  77 

that  very  opening  of  the  healing  life  of  God  to  men,  which 
would  not  only  carry  Christ  over  all  the  world,  but  would  also 
carry  Him  into  all  the  world's  life  and  make  Him  the  redeemer 
of  humanity.  The  evangelisation  of  the  world  in  this  generation, 
however,  is  not  the  full  aim  of  the  foreign  missionary  enterprise. 
The  aim  of  this  enterprise  is  to  establish  everywhere  a  Church 
that  will  have  this  for  her  aim,  to  inspire  that  Church  as  she 
is  founded  abroad,  and  to  quicken  the  Church  that  has  been 
founded  at  home  to  seek  this  end,  and  to  co-operate  with  both 
until  it  is  absorbed  in  the  awakened  tide  of  their  missionary 
energy  in  their  effort  to  realise  the  character  of  God  in  Christ 
and  to  fulfil  the  very  nature  of  the  Christian  Church  and  the 
Gospel  with  which  she  is  charged  in  the  Christianisation  of  all 
the  life  of  man. 

When  once  the  distinctive  and  determining  aim  of  the  mis- 
sionary enterprise  is  clearly  grasped,  then  we  can  make  room 
for  the  use  of  almost  any  method.  Everything  is  legitimate 
which  is  consistent  with  this  aim  and  which  helps  to  realise  it. 
As  Alexander  Duff  said  in  the  resolution  which  he  presented 
at  the  Conference  held  on  the  occasion  of  his  visit  to  New  York 
City  in  1854  in  answer  to  the  question :  "  What  are  the  divinely 
appointed  and  most  efficient  means  of  extending  the  Gospel  of 
salvation  to  all  men  ?  " 


Resolved,  as  the  general  sense  of  this  Convention,  that  the 
chief  means  of  divine  appointment  for  the  evangelisation  of  the 
world  are — the  faithful  teaching  and  preaching  of  the  pure 
Gospel  of  salvation  by  duly  qualified  ministers  and  other  holy 
and  consistent  disciples  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ — accompanied 
with  prayer  and  savingly  applied  by  the  grace  of  the  Holy  Spirit ; 
such  means,  in  the  providential  application  of  them  by  human 
agency,  embracing  not  merely  instruction  by  the  living  voice, 
but  the  translation  and  judicious  circulation  of  the  whole  written 
word  of  God — the  preparation  and  circulation  of  evangelical 
tracts  and  books — as  well  as  any  other  instrumentalities  fitted 
to  bring  the  word  of  God  home  to  men's  souls — together  with 
any  processes  which  experience  may  have  sanctioned  as  the  most 
efficient  in  raising  up  everywhere  indigenous  ministers  and  teach- 
ers of  the  living  Gospel. 


78  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

We  see  this  flexibility  of  method  combined  with  definiteness 
of  aim  in  the  missionary  work  of  St.  Paul.  He  sought  to  do 
just  what  foreign  missions  are  seeking  to  do,  and  he  resorted 
to  every  method  which  he  thought  might  prove  serviceable. 
He  went  out  to  the  centres  over  the  Roman  world  where  men 
were  accessible  and  where  the  Church,  when  established,  would 
be  most  influential  in  reaching  both  lives  and  life.  He  did  not 
settle  permanently  in  one  place.  His  ambition  was  to  found 
churches  all  over  the  Roman  Empire,  and  especially  in  unevan- 
gelised  territory.  He  was,  at  least  to  a  great  extent,  self-support- 
ing in  his  work,  labouring  with  his  own  hands  in  some  places, 
and  at  other  times  apparently  living  upon  other  resources.  At 
any  rate,  the  churches  which  he  founded  did  not  support  him. 
He  did  not  rely  upon  miracles,  or  philanthropic  work  of  any 
sort.  He  did  not  supply  funds  for  the  salaries  of  workers  in 
the  churches.  He  appointed  leaders  of  the  Christians  from 
among  their  own  number  and  expected  them  to  give  liberally 
to  aid  the  poor  in  distant  places.  He  took  the  living  Gospel  of 
the  divine  Saviour  and  planted  that  in  the  soil  of  human  life. 
He  was  his  own  supreme  method.  Christ  was  in  him,  and  in 
him  and  by  him  Christ  was  preached  to  men. 

The  conditions  to-day  are  widely  different  from  the  con- 
ditions with  which  Paul  had  to  deal.  We  work  among  people 
of  other  languages,  other  civilisations,  other  intellectual  and 
moral  presuppositions,  other  political  sovereignties,  where  our 
propaganda  is  entangled  with  contradictions.  Our  work  is  easier, 
but  it  is  also  more  difficult  than  his.  We  go  about  it  with 
his  methods,  and  also  with  methods  of  our  own — but  all  with 
the  same  aim. 

The  first  method  is  the  method  of  our  Saviour  Himself, — 
namely,  the  method  of  incarnation.  That  is  the  only  way  living 
truth  can  be  communicated.  Words  cannot  convey  it.  In  many 
lands  there  are  no  words  which  contain  or  even  suggest  the  new 
ideas  which  are  to  be  conveyed.  In  China  for  many  generations 
there  has  been  a  dispute  as  to  the  best  term  to  use  for  God. 
And  even  if  there  were  words,  the  words  cannot  impart  life 
save  as  a  living  Spirit  works  in  them,  and  as  for  the  most  part 


THE  MISSIONARY  AIM  AND  METHODS  79 

they  are  illustrated  and  confirmed  in  life.  Men  must  be  the 
Gospel  before  men.  Only  by  being  Himself  the  conception  of 
God  which  He  came  to  reveal  did  Jesus  impart  that  conception 
to  men.  Only  by  being  the  bread  of  life  and  the  light  of  the 
world  did  He  give  nourishment  and  knowledge  to  human  souls. 
It  is  so  still. 

It  goes  without  saying  that  the  man  who  would  thus  make 
Christ  known  will  love  the  people  to  whom  he  goes  and  will  be 
their  friend.  He  may  not  like  them.  He  surely  will  abhor  much 
that  he  finds  among  them  as  he  abhors  much  that  he  finds  at 
home,  but  the  love  of  Christ  constrains  him  to  love  the  un- 
likable,  and  that  love  will  discover  what  is  lovely  or  can  be 
made  so.  The  missionary  enterprise  sprang  from  such  a  temper, 
and  whatever  men  may  say  about  the  hard  motives  which  they 
suppose  led  our  fathers  to  begin  it,  we  know  that  it  was  begun 
in  a  spirit  of  great  sympathy  and  desire  for  the  most  practical 
helpfulness.  The  letter  which  the  General  Assembly  of  the 
Presbyterian  Church  in  the  United  States  of  America  addressed 
to  its  foreign  missionaries  in  India  and  Africa  in  1838  well 
illustrates  this  view : 

Let  the  heathen  among  whom  you  labour  see  that  you  love 
them  and  that  you  are  intent  on  promoting  their  best  interests. 
Your  labours  will  be  pleasant  to  yourselves,  as  well  as  more  likely 
to  benefit  them  in  proportion  to  the  degree  in  which  you  feel 
and  manifest  an  ardent  desire  to  advance  their  happiness.  You 
can  probably  do  much  for  promoting  their  temporal  as  well  as 
their  eternal  welfare  by  recommending  abstinence  from  intoxi- 
cating liquors,  industry,  the  introduction  of  important  arts  and 
trades ;  and,  in  short,  everything  which  has  a  bearing  on  personal 
and  domestic  comfort.  Every  benefit  of  this  nature  which  you 
confer  on  the  heathen  will  endear  you  to  them,  and  will  also 
prepare  them  more  fully  to  profit  by  your  evangelical  ministra- 
tions. In  a  word,  everything  that  you  can  do  to  lift  them  up 
in  the  scale  of  knowledge  and  civilisation,  as  well  as  of  Chris- 
tianity, will  be  important,  and  will  forward  the  great  purpose 
for  which  you  are  sent  to  them. 

The  supreme  missionary  method  is  this  living  of  the  Gospel. 
Each  true  missionary  is  in  himself  a  proclamation  of  Christ. 


80  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

Without  a  word  he  is  making  Christ  known  if  he  is  living 
Christ  before  the  people.  The  simple  fact  that  all  over  the 
non-Christian  world  are  little  companies  of  Christian  men  and 
women  who  are  living  the  Christian  life  and  in  themselves  re- 
vealing Christ,  is  a  missionary  agency  of  greater  power  than 
any  other,  and  without  which  no  other  would  be  of  any  power 
at  all. 

The  truly  great  missionaries,  accordingly,  have  been  the  men 
and  women  of  love  in  whom  Christ  has  shone  forth.  The 
richer  their  intellectual  capacities  and  personal  force,  the  better, 
but  only  provided  through  these  also  Christ  was  made  known 
to  men.  Let  us  recall,  for  illustration,  three  great  missionaries 
who  were  men  of  rare  qualities,  but  whose  chief  power  and 
service  were  their  ceaseless  witness  to  Christ  in  all  that  they 
were  and  did.  The  first  is  Adoniram  Judson.  His  missionary 
ideal  was  set  forth  in  a  letter  home :  "  In  encouraging  other 
young  men  to  come  out  as  missionaries,  do  use  the  greatest 
caution.  One  wrong-headed,  conscientiously-obstinate  fellow 
would  ruin  us.  Humble,  quiet,  persevering  men ;  men  of  sound, 
sterling  talents  (though,  perhaps,  not  brilliant),  of  decent  ac- 
complishments, and  some  natural  aptitude  to  acquire  a  language ; 
men  of  an  amiable,  yielding  temper,  willing  to  take  the  lowest 
place,  to  be  the  least  of  all  and  the  servant  of  all;  men  who 
enjoy  much  closet  religion,  who  live  near  to  God,  and  are  willing 
to  suffer  all  things  for  Christ's  sake,  without  being  proud  of  it, 
these  are  the  men.  .  .  .  But  O !  how  unlike  to  this  description 
is  the  writer  of  it." 

But  those  who  knew  him  felt  that  he  did  embody  this  ideal, 
and  his  own  spiritual  principles  show  how  fervently  he  sought 
to  represent  Christ  in  his  own  person  and  to  glorify  Him,  whether 
by  life  or  by  death : 

Points  of  Self-denial 

i.  The  passion  for  neatness,  uniformity,  and  order  in  arrange- 
ment of  things — in  dress,  in  writing,  in  grounds. 

2.  A  disposition  to  suffer  annoyance  from  little  improprieties 
in  the  behaviour  and  conversation  of  others. 


THE  MISSIONARY  AIM  AND  METHODS  81 

3.  A  desire  to  appear  to  advantage,  to  get  honour  and  avoid 
shame.     "  Come  shame,  come  sorrow,"  etc. 

4.  A  desire  for  personal  ease  and  comfort,  and  a  reluctance 
to  suffer  inconvenience. 

5.  Unwillingness  to  bear  contradiction. 

Rules  of  Life 

Rules  adopted  on  Sunday,  April  4,  1819,  the  era  of  commenc- 
ing public  ministrations  among  the  Burmans ;  revised  and  adopted 
on  Saturday,  December  9,  1820,  and  on  Wednesday,  April  25, 
1821. 

1.  Be  diligent  in  secret  prayer,  every  morning  and  evening. 

2.  Never  spend  a  moment  in  mere  idleness. 

3.  Restrain  natural  appetites  within  the  bounds  of  temperance 
and  purity.    "  Keep  thyself  pure." 

4.  Suppress  every  emotion  of  anger  and  ill  will. 

5.  Undertake  nothing  from  motives  of  ambition  or  love  of 
fame. 

6.  Never  do  that  which,  at  the  moment,  appears  to  be  dis- 
pleasing to  God. 

7.  Seek  opportunities  of  making  some  sacrifice  for  the  good 
of  others,  especially  of  believers,  provided  the  sacrifice  is  not 
inconsistent  with  some  duty. 

8.  Endeavour  to  rejoice  in  every  loss  and  suffering  incurred 
for  Christ's  sake  and  the  Gospel's,  remembering  that  though, 
like  death,  they  are  not  to  be  wilfully  incurred,  yet,  like  death, 
they  are  great  gain. 

Readopted  the  above  rules,  particularly  the  4th,  on  Sunday, 
August  31,  1823. 

Readopted  the  above  rules,  particularly  the  first,  on  Sunday, 
October  29,  1826,  and  adopted  the  following  minor  rules: 

1.  Rise  with  the  sun. 

2.  Read  a  certain  portion  of  Burman  every  day,  Sundays 
excepted. 

3.  Have  the  Scriptures  and  some  devotional  book  in  constant 
reading. 

4.  Read  no  book  in  English  that  has  not  a  devotional  tend- 
ency. 

5.  Suppress  every  unclean  thought  and  look. 

Revised  and  readopted  all  the  above  rules,  particularly  the 
second  of  the  first  class,  on  Sunday,  March  11,  1827. 


82  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

August  9,  1842. 
God  grant  me  grace  to  keep  the  above  rules,  and  ever  live 
to  His  glory,  for  Jesus  Christ's  sake.    A.  Judson. 

1.  Be  more  careful  to  observe  the  seasons  of  secret  prayer. 

2.  Never  indulge  resentful  feelings  toward  any  person. 

3.  Embrace  every  opportunity  of  exercising  kind  feelings,  and 
doing  good  to  others,  especially  to  the  household  of  faith. 

4.  Sweet  in  temper,  face,  and  word, 

To  please  an  ever-present  Lord. 

Renewed  December  31,  1842. 

December  31,  1842.  Resolved  to  make  the  desire  to  please 
Christ  the  grand  motive  of  all  my  actions. 

The  second  is  James  Stewart,  the  founder  of  Lovedale,  whom 
Lord  Milner  called  the  greatest  human  in  South  Africa,  but 
who  would  never  have  been  that  if  he  had  not  been  more,  if 
Christ  had  not  been  in  him  and  through  him  made  known,  in 
tenderness  and  patience  and  love.  "  Tenderness  of  heart  in 
him,"  says  Dr.  Wells  in  his  biography,  "  rose  to  genius,  and 
it  was  not  chilled  by  years  or  by  cruel  disappointments.  His 
sympathies  overflowed  and  went  down  beneath  man  to  the  animal 
world.  A  man  or  beast  in  misery  was  to  him  a  sacred  thing. 
He  could  not  pass  unheeded  a  beggar,  an  old  man  or  woman, 
or  poor  little  children.  However  busy — and  he  was  always  in 
a  whirlpool  of  work — he  had  endless  patience  with  sufferers. 
...  It  was  the  knowledge  of  his  sympathy  with  them  in  all 
their  troubles  that  gave  Stewart  such  a  hold  over  his  natives 
and  pupils.  They  knew  that  they  could  go  to  him  at  any  hour 
of  the  day,  and  he  would  listen  as  patiently  to  their  little  tales 
of  distress  as  if  it  were  a  matter  of  mighty  moment.  His  sym- 
pathy kept  him  from  being  impatient  with  those  less  gifted  than 
himself.  Stewart  was  full  of  patience  towards  the  boys  and  girls 
who  were  gathered  together  at  Lovedale." 

The  third  missionary  is  David  Hill.  Let  me  quote  an  extract 
from  Dr.  Barber's  "  David  Hill,  Missionary  and  Saint."  It  is 
Hill  himself  speaking: 

The  possibility  of  a  far,  I  was  almost  writing  an  infinitely, 
higher  Christian  life  than  I  live  or  see  lived,  is  so  indisputable 


THE  MISSIONARY  AIM  AND  METHODS         83 

to  reasonable  minds  that  the  employment  of  this  or  that  term 
in  expressing  the  same  is  to  my  mind  a  small  matter. 

The  Church  needs,  and  John  Wesley  felt,  as  he  proceeded 
with  his  great  work,  the  great  benefit  of  the  setting  forth  of  a 
high  ideal  towards  which  to  aim, — an  ideal,  if  you  like  to  call 
it  so,  but  an  impossible  ideal,  which,  if  faithfully  and  honestly 
taught,  sets  men  a-longing  for  it  by  the  power  of  the  concurrently 
witnessing  Spirit.  But  you  will  find  as  clear  exposition  of  John 
Wesley's  teaching  on  this  subject  in  his  hymn-book  as  any- 
where. 

"  A  little  MS.  book  lies  before  me,"  writes  Dr.  Barber, 
"  marked  '  Private  and  Personal,'  and  it  is  with  hushed  footstep 
that  we  venture  into  the  inner  shrine  of  a  soul's  dealing  with 
God.  It  contains  the  records  of  prayer  and  answer.  '  A  register 
of  matters  on  which  I  have  been  much  pressed  in  spirit,  and 
for  which  I  have  been  largely  drawn  out  in  prayer.'  There 
are  two  divisions,  headed  '  Personal '  and  '  General.'  Some 
prayers  occur  again  and  again,  some  are  speedily  marked  as  an- 
swered. There  occur  as  subjects  of  supplication  the  names  of 
missionary  secretaries  in  England,  English  friends, — missionary, 
consular,  and  mercantile — in  China,  Chinese  with  whom  he  has 
been  talking,  statesmen  and  mandarins,  the  Chinese  money- 
changers, etc.  There  are  pathetic  confessions  of  sin,  of  fear  of 
excess  in  food  and  sleep,  of  faults  of  temper,  and  again  and 
again  is  the  record  '  with  groanings  which  cannot  be  uttered.' 
There  are  thanksgivings  for  conquest  over  parsimony  and  im- 
patience, and  for  the  consciousness  of  guidance.  Here  is  an 
entry : 

Carried  out  in  rapturous  love  to  Christ  whilst  on  the  road ; 
the  dear  friends  at  Taiyuen  Fu  must  have  been  praying  for  me. 
This  was  early  in  the  morning,  but  in  the  afternoon  wounded 
badly  by  Satan, — cartman  very  trying,  impatience,  etc. 

Here  is  a  form  of  daily  self-inquiry: 

1.  What  is  my  present  relation  to  God?  A  son?  A  slave? 
An  enemy? 

2.  What  to  my  fellow-men?    In  love  and  charity? 

3.  What  act  of  self-denial  have  I  done  or  can  I  do  to-day? 

4.  What  prayer  has  been  answered?    Give  thanks. 


84  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

5.  What  "lost"  ones  have  I  sought  to  save? 

6.  What  duties  arise  out  of  prayers  I  have  put  up  to-day? 

7.  What  grace  of  Christian  character  do  I  need  especially  to 
foster  to-day?    By  what  means? 

Here  are  two  estimates  of  the  man  from  those  who  knew 
him,  one  a  missionary,  the  other  a  civilian : 

Mr.  Hill  was  noted  for  his  gentle  and  refined  manners.  He 
was  the  Christian  gentleman  everywhere  and  always.  Whether 
in  his  intercourse  with  foreigners  or  natives  he  was  always 
polite,  always  civil,  always  refined.  He  had  his  strong  con- 
victions, and  he  held  them  tenaciously ;  but  it  was  always  in  the 
spirit  of  unfeigned  meekness  and  true  charity.  What  is  it  to 
be  a  gentleman  ?  Is  it  to  be  honest,  gentle,  generous,  brave,  wise, 
and,  possessing  all  these  qualities,  to  exercise  them  in  the  most 
graceful  outward  manner?  If  that  is  to  be  a  gentleman,  then 
David  Hill  was  unquestionably  a  perfect  gentleman  in  every 
sense  of  the  word.  He  was  more — he  was  a  Christian  gentle- 
man. Over  and  above  all  these  natural  and  acquired  qualifica- 
tions there  rested  upon  him  something  that  lifted  him  far  above 
the  mere  gentleman,  and  which  those  who  knew  him  best  could 
only  recognise  as  the  beauty  of  the  Lord. 

To  me  he  has  always  seemed  the  type  of  an  ideal  missionary, 
and  I  have  quoted  him  and  his  life  scores  of  times  in  refutation 
of  unfriendly  criticism  of  missionaries  and  their  work.  The  in- 
fluence which  men  of  his  stamp — unconsciously  often  to  them- 
selves— exercise  upon  Europeans  as  well  as  upon  natives,  is  not 
perhaps  properly  appreciated  until  we  have  lost  them.  One 
cause,  to  my  mind,  of  the  distinct  line  of  demarcation,  which 
unfortunately  characterises  to  so  large  an  extent  the  intercourse 
of  missionaries  and  laymen  in  the  Far  East,  is  want  of  tolerance 
on  the  part  of  the  former,  and  of  sympathy,  among  other  things, 
on  the  part  of  the  latter.  We  find  in  David  Hill  a  bridge  between 
the  two.  While  his  life  was  saturated,  so  to  speak,  with  religious 
ideas  and  aspirations,  he  was  absolutely  tolerant ;  and  as  he  was 
a  man  of  high  education  and  refinement — a  gentleman  in  the 
highest  sense  of  the  word — one  felt  in  his  presence  that  one 
was  not  dealing  with  a  man  who  had  placed  himself  on  a  pedestal 
of  lofty,  moral  superiority,  but  one  who  was  sympathetic,  liberal 
minded,  and  appreciative  of  the  doubts  and  difficulties  with  which 
so  many  conscientious  men  have  to  struggle,  while  his  trans- 
parently simple  and  self-denying  life  was  beyond  the  reach  of 
hostile  criticism.     For  myself,  I  can  only  say  that  he  will  hold 


THE  MISSIONARY  AIM  AND  METHODS  85 

a  revered  place  in  my  memory.     I  owe  much  to  his  talk,  his 
influence,  and  his  example. 

These  men  made  Christ  known  in  their  lives.  If  they  had 
not  done  so,  they  could  not  have  made  Him  known  by  their 
words.  "  The  very  presence  of  a  missionary,  man  or  woman, 
is  the  symptom  of  a  good  method,"  says  Dr.  Cust.  "  It  is  a 
surprise  to  the  Africans  to  have  a  white  man  in  their  midst,  who, 
if  he  chose,  could  ill-use  them,  carry  off  their  wife  and  children 
and  sell  them  as  slaves,  and  yet  does  not  do  so:  the  wages, 
whether  in  cash  or  kind,  paid  regularly,  cause  a  new  sensation 
among  people  used  to  do  forced  labour :  the  kind  word  uttered, 
and  assistance  rendered  in  case  of  sickness,  surprises  them  still 
more.  Character  does  not  go  for  much  in  old  civilised  countries, 
like  India,  China,  and  Japan,  yet  the  people  are  led  to  reflect 
upon  the  wonderful  phenomenon,  that  there  are  men  and  women 
living  among  them  for  a  score  or  more  years,  not  to  rule  the 
land  like  the  officials,  not  to  make  money  like  the  merchant,  but 
to  do  acts  of  kindness,  speak  words  of  gentleness,  encourage 
morality,  and  talk  about  God,  and  a  Future  State." 

But  we  are  told  by  some  that  this  can  only  be  effectively 
done,  that  we  can  only  truly,  persuasively  represent  Christ  to 
these  non-Christian  peoples  by  the  absolutely  ascetic  ideal,  or 
that  there  are  conditions  in  which  only  that  ideal  can  avail. 
So  Canon  Taylor  argued  in  the  paper  in  the  Fortnightly  Review, 
twenty-two  years  ago,  on  "  The  Great  Missionary  Failure," 
which  attracted  so  much  undeserved  attention.  "  The  man  who 
can  best  touch  the  hearts  of  Indians,"  said  he,  "  must  be  a  celi- 
bate and  an  ascetic,  abstaining  from  alcohol,  living  like  the  natives 
on  rice,  receiving  no  payment,  either  a  mendicant  or  working 
with  his  own  hands,  giving  up  everything  that  makes  life  com- 
fortable, converting,  not  by  argument,  but  by  exhibiting  in  prac- 
tice that  absolute  self-renunciation  which  is  the  only  language 
the  natives  can  understand." — (Fortnightly Review, October,  1888. 
p.  495.)  This  is  the  easy  ideal  of  many  missionary  theorists 
and  critics.  But  it  is  the  ideal  of  others,  also,  within  the  mis- 
sionary circle.     Chinese  Gordon  believed  that  such  a  principle 


86  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

alone  would  avail  in  the  Soudan.  The  conditions  made  anything 
else  impracticable.  "  There  is  not  the  least  doubt,"  he  wrote 
to  his  sister,  "  that  there  is  an  immense  virgin  field  for  an 
apostle  in  these  countries  among  the  black  tribes.  .  .  .  But 
where  will  you  find  an  apostle?  I  will  explain  what  I  mean 
by  that  term.  He  must  be  a  man  who  has  died  entirely  to 
the  world ;  who  has  no  ties  of  any  sort ;  who  longs  for  death 
when  it  may  please  God  to  take  him;  who  can  bear  the  intense 
dulness  of  these  countries ;  who  seeks  for  few  letters ;  and  who 
can  bear  the  thought  of  dying  deserted.  ...  A  man  must 
give  up  everything,  understand  everything,  everything  to  do 
anything  for  Christ  here.  ...  To  tell  you  plainly,  I  think  the 
price  God  asks  of  a  man  who  comes  out  to  live  among  the 
tribes  is  too  great  for  a  man  to  pay.  I  know  none,  no,  not 
one  who  could  pay  it." — ("  Letters  to  his  Sister,"  pp.  130-135.) 
Even  more  within  the  circle,  we  have  had  men  like  Crossett 
in  China  who  have  become  mendicants  for  Christ's  sake,  and 
we  are  watching  now  Mr.  Stokes's  experiment  with  the  friar 
life  in  India,  in  which  he  seeks  a  literal  imitation,  as  he  con- 
ceives it,  of  the  life  of  Christ,  exempting  the  great  body  of 
missionaries  from  such  responsibility,  but  contending  that  the 
Christian  fakirs  are  indispensable.  "  Their  lives  will  count," 
writes  Mr.  Stokes.  "  I  speak  not  from  theory,  but  in  the  light 
of  experience.  Most  non-Christians  are  unable  to  believe  in  the 
disinterestedness  of  our  missionaries,  and  are  inclined  to  look  at 
their  labours  as  the  fruit  of  some  Government  policy.  Hence, 
men  are  needed  who  will  take  their  hearts  by  storm  and  force 
them  to  admit  the  great  and  disinterested  love  of  the  Christians 
by  the  magnitude  of  their  self-sacrifice  and  the  Christlikeness 
of  their  labours.  Men  are  needed  who  will  be  willing  to  deny 
themselves  completely  and  live  the  roughest  of  lives  under  the 
most  trying  circumstances  for  Christ's  sake." — (East  and  West, 
April,  1908,  p.  138,  Art.  "  Interpreting  Christ  to  India.") 

Every  Christian  heart  must  rejoice  in  such  devotion  and  pray 
for  God's  blessing  upon  it.  Mr.  Stokes  does  not  propose  his 
plan  as  the  standard  missionary  method  but  as  a  useful  sup- 
plementary agency.     There  are  some,  however,  who  do  advocate 


THE  MISSIONARY  AIM  AND  METHODS         87 

the  fakir  or  mendicant  ideal  as  the  only  true  or  at  least  the 
wisest  missionary  ideal.  It  is  an  appealing  theory,  but  the 
example  of  Christ  is  against  it,  and  the  principles  of  St.  Paul. 
Their  aim  was  to  domesticate  Christianity  in  the  common  life  of 
man,  not  to  commend  it  by  an  abnormal  setting.  Whatever  was 
necessary  to  effect  their  mission  they  accepted,  but  these  things 
were  not  their  mission,  and  both  rejected  the  ascetic  ideal.  Those 
who  have  tried  it  have  accomplished  no  such  results  by  it  as  were 
accomplished  by  Judson,  Stewart,  and  David  Hill.  In  India 
the  work  of  the  Salvation  Army,  which  Canon  Taylor  praised 
as  embodying  the  right  principle,  has  been  an  utter  failure  among 
the  native  peoples,  and  George  Bowen  and  missionaries  still 
living,  who  have  sought  by  asceticism  and  imitation  of  native 
modes  of  life  to  make  Christ  known  to  the  people,  have  had 
to  confess  that  the  method  was  ineffective, — and  for  obvious 
reasons.  The  Hindu  people  "  understand  real  asceticism  per- 
fectly well,"  as  Mr.  Meredith  Townsend  wrote  long  ago, 
"  and  reverence  it  as  a  subjugation  of  the  flesh,  and  if  the 
missionary  and  his  wife  carried  out  the  ascetic  life  as  Hindus 
understand  it,  lived  in  a  hut,  half  or  wholly  naked,  sought  no 
food  but  what  was  given  them,  and  suffered  daily  some  visible 
physical  pain,  they  might  stir  up  the  reverence  which  the  Hindu 
pays  to  those  who  are  palpably  superior  to  human  needs.  But 
in  their  eyes  there  is  no  asceticism  in  the  life  of  the  mean 
white,  the  Eurasian  writer,  or  the  Portuguese  clerk,  but  only 
a  squalor  unbecoming  a  teacher,  and  one  who  professes  and 
must  profess  scholarly  cultivation.  .  .  .  The  cheap  mission- 
aries will  have  absolutely  no  special  result  to  encourage  them 
to  persevere.  A  missionary  is  not  made  more  efficient  by  being 
sacrificed  every  day  with  the  squalid  troubles  of  extreme  poverty, 
and  the  notion  that  his  low  position  will  bring  him  closer  to 
the  natives  is  the  merest  delusion.  The  white  missionary  is 
not  separated  from  the  Indian  by  this  means,  but  by  his  colour 
and  the  difference  produced  by  a  thousand  years  of  differing 
civilisation,  which  the  word  colour  implies.  He  is  a  European  ; 
those  to  whom  he  preaches  are  Asiatics ;  in  presence  of  that 
distinction  all  others  are  not  only  trivial  but  imperceptible.    The 


88  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

effect  of  the  cheap  missionary  on  the  native  mind  will  be  pre- 
cisely that  of  the  dear  missionary,  except  that  as  an  unmarried 
man  he  will  be  regarded  with  infinitely  more  suspicion  and 
disgust.  Nothing,  in  fact,  will  be  gained  by  the  change  except 
the  privilege  of  repeating  an  experiment  which  has  been  made 
half  a  dozen  times  and  has  invariably  failed." 

Christ  is  made  known  by  what  a  man  is,  and  not  by  the  mere 
style  of  his  dress  or  home,  or  the  appearance  of  his  person. 
The  missionary  enterprise  aims  to  plant  the  Gospel;  for  that 
purpose  it  needs  agents;  it  needs  to  keep  them  in  health  and 
strength  of  body  and  mind ;  the  more  experience  they  have  the 
more  efficient  they  are.  So  much  should  be  spent  as  is  necessary 
for  these  purposes, — no  more  or  less.  Whatever  difficulties 
spring  from  the  comfort  of  the  missionary's  life  are  unavoidable. 
A  real  love  in  his  heart  will  overcome  all  these,  and  if  Christ 
is  there  small  problems  will  solve  themselves  and  Christ  will 
speak  forth.     This  is  the  primary  missionary  method. 

But  if  Christ  is  really  in  a  man  He  will  speak  forth  through 
the  man's  lips  as  well  as  through  his  life.  The  great  commission 
was  a  command  of  oral  proclamation.  The  Saviour  Himself 
was  a  teacher,  and  the  Gospel  was  spread  at  the  beginning,  and 
must  be  spread  now,  by  conversation.  New  believers  talked 
about  their  faith  to  others.  Its  missionaries  seized  all  the  oppor- 
tunities of  human  intercourse  for  the  communication  of  the  good 
news  which  they  bore.  They  feared  no  situation  and  were 
equipped  to  set  forth  their  message  to  every  type  of  mind. 
"  The  unity  and  variety  native  to  the  preaching  of  Christianity 
from  the  very  first,"  says  Harnack,  "  were  what  constituted 
the  secret  of  its  fascination  and  a  vital  condition  of  its  success. 
On  the  one  hand,  it  was  so  simple  that  it  could  be  summed  up 
in  a  few  brief  sentences  and  understood  in  a  single  crisis  of 
the  inner  life;  on  the  other  hand,  it  was  so  versatile  and  rich 
that  it  vivified  all  thought  and  stimulated  every  emotion.  It 
was  capable,  almost  from  the  outset,  of  vying  with  every  noble 
and  worthy  enterprise,  with  any  speculation,  or  with  any  cult  of 
the  mysteries.  It  was  both  new  and  old ;  it  was  both  present 
and  future.     Clear  and  transparent,  it  was  also  profound  and 


THE  MISSIONARY  AIM  AND  METHODS         89 

full  of  mystery.  It  had  statutes,  and  yet  rose  superior  to  any 
law.  It  was  a  doctrine  and  yet  no  doctrine,  a  philosophy  and 
yet  something  different  from  philosophy." — (Harnack,  "Ex- 
pansion of  Christianity,"  Vol.  I,  p.  102.) 

These  early  missionaries  proclaimed  the  facts  of  Christianity 
and  applied  them  to  life.  The  missionaries  of  mediaeval  Europe 
followed  the  same  course.  "  Their  teaching,"  says  Maclear, 
"  from  first  to  last  was  eminently  objective.  It  dealt  clearly 
with  the  great  facts  of  Christianity.  It  proclaimed  the  incarna- 
tion of  the  Saviour,  His  life,  His  death,  His  resurrection,  His 
ascension,  His  future  coming  to  judge  the  quick  and  dead,  and 
then  it  proceeded  to  treat  of  the  good  works  which  ought  to 
flow  from  the  vital  reception  of  these  Christian  truths."  Our 
apologetic  conditions,  in  the  midst  of  the  great  ethnic  religions, 
are  different  to-day,  and  they  differ  in  different  lands  and  in 
different  sections  of  the  same  people.  Before  Mohammedanism 
we  face  a  problem  unknown  to  the  Apostles  and  evaded  by  the 
mediaeval  Church,  with  one  such  shining  exception  as  Raymond 
Lull.  In  each  nation  the  mode  of  preaching  Christ  adapts  itself 
to  the  fashion  of  men's  minds,  and  on  the  other  side  it  takes 
form  from  the  experience  and  faith  of  the  preachers.  How 
great  and  intricate  is  the  problem, — so  great  and  intricate  that 
we  must  have  committed  more  error  far  than  we  dream.  "  I 
for  one,"  said  Mr.  Jones,  "  most  certainly  believe  that  there 
has  been  an  immense  amount  of  preaching,  which  was  done 
in  a  most  unwise,  most  bald,  and  detrimental  way;  indeed,  so 
much  so  as  to  render  it  really  unworthy  of  being  called  the 
true  preaching  of  Christ  at  all, — preaching  which,  if  Christ  had 
preached  on  earth  after  His  resurrection,  He  would  have  been 
slow  to  own  as  the  preaching  of  Him ;  and  this  to  such  an 
extent  and  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  the  name  of  Jesus  a  by- 
word among  the  heathen,  in  proportion  as  the  sound  of  it  is 
known, — a  result  not  by  any  means  arising  solely  from  the  per- 
versity of  the  natural  heart,  but  very  largely  from  the  indiscreet 
way  in  which  that  name  has  been  preached."  It  is  so  difficult 
just  because  it  is  so  fundamental  and  primary.  The  missionary 
enterprise  needs  the  ablest,  most  original,  most  adaptive  men  to 


9o  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

make  Christ  known  by  word  to  the  non-Christian  world.  But 
at  the  same  time  it  is  both  true  and  comfortable  to  remind  our- 
selves that  any  man  who  will  tell  the  facts  of  the  Gospel  in 
love,  who  knows  Christ  as  his  own  Saviour  and  Lord,  and  can 
speak  out  of  his  own  human  heart  to  other  men's  hearts,  will 
be  preaching  Him.  The  human  race  is  one.  Its  unity  underlies 
all  its  varieties.  There  is  a  capacity  of  response  in  each  son 
to  his  Father's  call,  and  the  man  who  truly  knows  God  in  Christ 
and  truly  loves  his  fellow-men  cannot  preach  without  making 
Christ  known. 

The  difficulties  and  discouragements  of  preaching  Christ 
often  turn  men  aside  to  other  less  arduous  and  exacting  forms 
of  missionary  service?  No  work  is  more  intellectually  taxing 
if  rightly  done.  None  draws  so  upon  the  very  depths  of  the 
soul.  None  demands  more  patience  and  tenderness.  It  is  hard 
enough  when  carried  on  locally,  but  it  is  still  harder  when  it 
is  carried  on  as  Paul  carried  on  his  through  great  itineracies, 
carefully  planned  and  consecutively  followed  up.  But  whatever 
its  difficulties,  the  great  missionary  method  in  the  past,  and  a 
method  in  which  the  missionaries  themselves  must  be  leaders 
for  many  years  yet  to  come,  is  the  Apostolic  method  of  going 
about  and  preaching  the  Gospel.  What  such  work  still  is  Dr. 
Cust,  in  a  tender  mood,  rare  in  his  later  writings  on  missions, 
set  forth  in  an  idealised  picture  of  women's  evangelistic  work 
in  India :  "  To  the  village  women,"  wrote  he,  "  the  appearance 
of  a  female  evangelist  must  be,  as  it  were,  the  vision  of  an 
angel  from  Heaven.  To  their  untutored  eyes  she  appears  taller 
in  stature,  fairer  in  face,  sweeter  in  speech  than  anything  mortal 
they  had  ever  dreamed  of  before ;  bold  and  fearless  without 
immodesty ;  pure  in  word  and  action  yet  with  features  unveiled ; 
wise,  yet  condescending  to  the  ignorant  and  little  children ; 
prudent  and  self-restrained,  yet  still  a  woman  loving  and  tender 
— such  as  there  never  appeared  before  to  poor  village-women, 
even  in  their  dreams,  until  suddenly  their  eyes,  their  ears,  and 
their  hearts,  seem  to  realise  faintly  and  confusedly  the  beauty 
of  Holiness,  when  they  begin  to  hold  converse,  only  too  brief, 
with   their    sweet   and   loving   visitor,    who,    smitten    with   the 


THE  MISSIONARY  AIM  AND  METHODS  91 

wondrous  desire  to  save  souls,  has  come  across  the  sea  from 
some  unknown  country  to  comfort  and  help  them.  Short  as 
is  her  stay,  she  has,  as  it  were  with  a  magic  wand,  let  loose 
a  new  fountain  of  hopes,  of  fears,  and  desires :  she  has  told 
them,  perhaps  in  faltering  accents,  of  righteousness,  and  judg- 
ment, of  sin,  repentance,  and  pardon,  through  the  blessed  merits 
of  a  Saviour.  This  day  has  salvation  come  to  this  Indian 
village." 

The  third  great  missionary  method  is  foreshadowed  in  Paul's 
counsel  to  Timothy,  "  The  words  which  thou  hast  received 
from  me,  the  same  commit  thou  to  faithful  men,  who  shall  be 
able  to  teach  others  also."  And  Paul  was  anticipated  in  this 
obvious  and  inevitable  method  by  the  Saviour  Himself  in  the 
college  of  the  Apostles,  "  the  training  of  the  Twelve."  Regard- 
ing this  kind  of  educational  work  in  missions,  there  could  be 
no  controversy.  Men  and  women  are  to  be  trained  to  give  the 
Gospel  to  their  own  people.  It  is  a  commonplace  to  say  that 
the  evangelisation  of  any  land  must  be  in  the  main  accomplished 
by  the  people  of  that  land.  If  there  were  to  be  but  one  mis- 
sionary in  a  country,  his  best  work  would  be  done  in  raising 
up  a  large  body  of  native  preachers.  He  would  have  to  do 
preaching  himself  in  order  to  make  preachers  out  of  others,  but 
he  would  certainly  have  to  give  the  others  careful  training. 
Such  educational  work  as  is  necessary  to  raise  up  a  host  of 
native  preachers,  and  as  actually  accomplishes  such  a  result,  is 
an  indispensable  method  of  mission  work. 

But  the  problem  cannot  be  kept  in  this  simple  form.  When 
a  Christian  community  has  been  formed,  its  children  will  require 
Christian  education.  They  cannot  be  left  to  grow  up  as  the 
heathen  children  about  them.  Not  all  of  them  will  become  native 
preachers.  A  self-supporting  Church  must  rest  on  self-support- 
ing members,  and  if  all  become  preachers,  giving  all  their  time 
to  such  work,  who  will  support  them?  A  Christian  Church 
needs  a  wide  variety  of  Christian  leadership.  The  work  of  the 
Church  is  not  only  evangelisation ;  it  is  the  permeation  of  life 
with  Christian  principles.  Its  members  require  the  education 
which  will  equip  them  for  such  service.     Furthermore,  in  the 


92  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

actual  prosecution  of  the  work,  difficulties  are  encountered  which 
light  from  the  facts  of  the  world  and  of  history  will  dissolve; 
prejudices  are  met  which  knowledge  will  allay.  And  also  often 
our  statement  of  Christian  truth  finds  no  lodgment  for  it  in 
hardened  minds.  Young  and  plastic  minds,  kept  day  after  day 
under  Christian  teaching,  will,  it  would  seem  clear,  be  more 
likely  to  respond.  Now,  if  the  Christian  Church  in  a  given 
land  were  able  to  do  this  work,  or  if  in  part  at  least  it  were 
being  done  by  the  State  without  prejudice  to  Christianity,  to 
that  extent  foreign  missions  would  be  relieved  of  it;  but  in  the 
nature  of  the  case  the  Church  is  not  in  existence,  or  is  but 
just  coming  into  being,  and  the  State  is  likely  to  be  either  non- 
Christian  or  neutral,  with  a  neutrality  which  allows  hostility 
but  not  friendship  to  Christianity.  Conditions  such  as  these 
make  the  problem  of  education  as  a  missionary  method  a  far 
more  intricate  one. 

The  founders  of  our  modern  missionary  movement  viewed 
these  matters,  however,  with  good  spiritual  sense.  Let  me 
quote  again  from  the  letter  addressed  by  the  Presbyterian 
General  Assembly  in  1838  to  its  first  missionaries: 

We  recommend  to  your  attention  and  to  your  unceasing 
prayers  the  children  of  the  heathen.  We  are  far  from  despair- 
ing of  the  conversion  of  adults  among  them.  Experience,  as 
well  as  the  Word  of  God,  shows  that  the  power  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  can  overcome  the  most  obstinate  hardness,  as  well  as 
the  most  inveterate  habits  of  pagan  profligacy.  And,  therefore, 
it  will  be  your  duty  to  preach  the  Gospel  to  all  classes,  in  every 
form,  and  by  all  the  means  in  your  power.  Proclaiming  the 
Word  of  God,  by  the  living  teacher,  is  God's  own  ordinance, 
which  ought  never  to  be  exchanged  for  any  other,  where  it  is 
possible  to  employ  it.  But  still  we  consider  the  children  and 
young  people  as  pre-eminently  the  hope  of  your  missionary 
labours.  The  greater  susceptibility  of  the  youthful  mind — the 
durability  of  impressions  made  in  early  life — and  the  compara- 
tive ease  with  which  habits  are  changed  which  have  not  become 
inveterate — all  recommend  diligent  and  persevering  efforts  to 
form  the  minds  of  children  and  youth,  as  among  the  most  promis- 
ing and  probably  productive  departments  of  missionary  labour. 
But  this  is  not  all.     Parents  themselves  are  never  more  likely 


THE  MISSIONARY  AIM  AND  METHODS         93 

y  -  v 

to  be  effectually  reached  and  profited  than  through  the  medium 
of  their  children.  They  will,  of  course,  regard  with  favour 
those  whom  they  see  to  be  labouring  for  the  happiness  of  their 
offspring;  and  when  they  see  their  children  growing  in  knowl- 
edge and  in  good  habits  under  the  instruction  of  the  missionaries, 
this  will  form  a  new  bond  of  attachment  and  open  a  new  avenue 
to  their  hearts. 

We  exhort  you,  therefore,  next  to  the  preaching  of  the 
Gospel,  to  make  the  instruction  of  heathen  youth,  in  every  form 
which  you  may  find  practicable  and  expedient,  an  object  of  your 
constant  and  diligent  attention.  But  let  all  your  schools  and 
instructions  be  strongly  stamped  with  a  Christian  character.  Let 
the  Bible  be  everywhere  carefully  introduced.  Let  all  your 
efforts  for  the  benefit  of  youth  be  consecrated  with  prayer; 
and  let  the  excellent  catechisms  of  our  Church  be  as  early  and 
as  extensively  employed  as  possible,  as  formularies  of  instruction. 
Recollect  that  it  is  our  object  to  raise  up,  as  soon  as  practicable 
among  the  heathen,  a  native  ministry.  The  attainment  of  this 
object  will  require  the  most  vigorous  efforts  to  educate  the  young; 
the  selection  of  the  most  promising  of  their  number  for  special 
culture,  and  elevating  the  means  of  their  instruction  as  far  as 
circumstances  will  admit. 

The  Roman  Catholic  Church  has  never  faltered  in  its  wise 
policy  at  this  point.  "  This  is  one  of  the  most  vital  works  of 
the  mission,"  writes  Mr.  Kelly  of  the  Catholic  missions  in 
China,  and  especially  of  the  work  of  Christianising  the  children : 

They  must  be  instructed  very  young,  and  taken  away  as  much 
as  possible  from  pagan  surroundings.  To  do  this  properly,  the 
schools  should  be  near  the  missionaries.  There  are  central 
schools  in  all  the  chief  mission  stations,  where  the  children  are 
completely  separated  from  bad  influences,  and  are  taught  to 
practise  their  religion  by  their  teachers  and  by  the  good  example 
they  see  around  them,  whereas  children  who  have  not  had  this 
advantage  are  recognisable  at  a  glance,  as  they  do  not  compre- 
hend their  religion  at  all  well. 

Another  very  important  consideration  is  the  following  with 
regard  to  schools.  These  are  often  found  to  be  the  most  useful 
as  a  means  of  furthering  conversions,  as  according  to  a  French 
missionary,  "  When  the  infant  comes  to  school,  his  father  will 
soon  follow  the  child  to  the  church,"  and  these  dear  children, 
like  St.  John  the  Baptist,  fill  the  valleys  and  bring  low  the  moun- 


94  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

tains  and  hills,  by  opening  to  their  parents  the  path  leading  to 
our  Blessed  Saviour. 

It  is  the  business  of  the  foreign  mission  to  see  that  in- 
struction is  provided  in  some  way  for  Christian  children  and 
to  use  schools  for  reaching  children  with  the  knowledge  of 
Christ.  It  is  not  the  work  of  foreign  missions  merely  to  pro- 
vide education  as  such  for  the  children  of  any  nation.  That 
is  the  business  of  the  nation  and  the  Church  in  that  nation. 
The  missionary  enterprise  should  give  the  sense  of  educational 
duty  and  the  educational  form  to  both  nation  and  Church.  It 
has  already  done  this  in  India,  Japan,  China,  and  Korea,  and 
Brazil,  and  the  Turkish  Empire.     It  is  doing  it  in  other  lands. 

And  the  foreign  missionary  enterprise  uses,  and  does  right 
to  use,  education  also  as  a  preparatory  agency  as  well  as  a 
training  school  for  Christians  and  as  a  method  of  evangelisation. 
I  cannot  find  worthier  words  in  which  to  set  forth  this  view 
than  Dr.  William  Miller's  in  his  paper  on  "  Educational  Agencies 
in  Missions,"  in  1893 : 

The  servants  of  God  have  always  acted  (with  more  or  less 
of  insight  into  the  meaning  of  what  they  did)  upon  the 
principle  that  subordinate  preparatory  agencies — educational 
agencies  of  different  kinds — are  to  be  employed  in  the  mighty 
task  of  bringing  mankind  to  rejoice  in  God,  revealed  in  Christ. 
It  was  mainly  by  the  great  monastic  corporations,  so  long  as 
they  had  something  of  their  early  vigour,  that  Christianity 
was  maintained  and  spread  in  Europe  in  the  ages  when  the  rude 
northern  races  were  being  brought  under  the  gentle  yoke  of 
Christ.  These  corporations  were  centres  of  every  kind  of  human 
activity.  Occasionally  connected  with  them  there  were  schools 
and  hospitals,  orchards  and  farms,  and  warehouses.  Of  all  these 
activities  the  dominating  aim  was — wholly  in  point  of  theory 
and  to  some  extent  practically  as  well — that  they  should  be 
means  of  opening  men's  minds  to  saving  truth  and  of  bringing 
them  within  the  Christian  fold. 

But  to  act  on  an  implicit  principle  is  one  thing:  to  bring  a 
principle  into  clear  consciousness  and  work  it  out  with  deliberate 
intention  is  another.  The  greatest  discoveries  are  often  no  more 
at  bottom  than  the  statement  and  application  of  laws  and  prin- 
ciples which  are  always  operating  in  nature  and  which  are  there- 


THE  MISSIONARY  AIM  AND  METHODS  95 

fore,  in  the  strict  sense,  no  novelties  at  all.  Thus  it  is  only  in 
a  secondary  and  subordinate  sense  that  the  preparatory  use  of 
educational  agencies  has  any  novelty,  though  in  that  sense ^  it 
certainly  has  some.  The  distinct  statement  of  the  implicit  prin- 
ciple must  be  ascribed  to  Dr.  Inglis  of  Edinburgh,  the  Convener 
of  the  first  Committee  on  Indian  Missions  of  the  Scottish  Church. 
In  1818,  a  good  many  years  before  his  Church  in  its  corporate 
capacity  had  entered  on  any  foreign  work,  Dr.  Inglis,  in  a  sermon 
on  a  public  occasion,  enunciated  the  principle  which  he  after- 
wards largely  helped  to  reduce  to  practice.  He  held  it  to  be 
indisputable  that — to  use  his  own  words — "  a  man  of  an  under- 
standing mind,  habituated  to  thought  and  reflection,  has  an  ad- 
vantage over  others  for  estimating  both  the  evidence  of  the 
Christian  doctrine  and  its  accommodation  to  human  wants  and 
necessities."  From  this  the  practical  inference  drawn  by  the 
preacher  was,  to  use  his  own  words  again,  that  "  schools  for 
the  education  of  the  young,  in  every  department,  accomplish 
His  purpose  by  the  intervention  of  natural  means.  The  intrinsic 
excellence  of  the  Christian  doctrine,  and  its  accommodation  to 
our  spiritual  wants,  are,  through  Divine  Grace,  made  obvious  to 
the  eye  of  the  mind;  the  prejudices  of  the  corrupted  heart  are 
thereby  overcome,  and  our  inclinations,  instead  of  resisting  as 
formerly  the  external  evidences  of  the  truth,  co-operate  with 
that  evidence  towards  our  establishment  in  the  faith  of  the 
Gospel." 

The  principles  indicated  in  these  quotations  are  the  principles 
on  which  the  educational  mission  work  of  the  Scottish  Church 
has  always  proceeded,  and  still  proceeds.  Both  in  its  theory 
and  its  practice,  that  Church  maintains  that  while  the  simple 
presentation  of  the  message  of  forgiveness  and  love  through 
the  cross  of  Christ  is  the  highest  form  of  Christian  effort  and 
the  central  means  of  building  up  the  Church,  there  is  yet,  accord- 
ing to  the  divine  plan,  both  room  and  need  for  humbler  agencies 
to  work  in  auxiliary  subordination  to  it.  That  Church's  aim 
has  been  through  study  of  God's  ordinary  methods  of  procedure 
to  become  an  instrument  in  making  them  effectual — to  lay  her- 
self along  the  line  of  the  divine  purpose,  and,  seeking  no  glory 
for  herself,  to  do  intentionally,  and  therefore  more  rapidly,  a 
work  that  must  be  done  somehow  if  the  divine  purposes  are 
to  be  fully  carried  out  in  any  land  or  among  any  race.  These 
were  the  views  of  the  Committee  of  the  Scottish  Church  for 
Indian  Missions  which  was  formed  in  1825,  with  Dr.  Inglis  at 
its  head.  In  the  first  letter  of  that  Committee  to  "  the  people 
of   Scotland,"  these  significant   words  occur :    "  Let  it  not  be 


96  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

inferred  from  our  having  said  so  much  about  schools  and  other 
seminaries  of  education,  that  we  for  a  moment  lose  sight  of  the 
more  direct  means  of  accomplishing  our  object,  by  the  preaching 
of  the  Gospel  to  the  heathen  world.  .  .  .  It  is  in  subserviency 
to  the  success  of  preaching  that  we  would,  in  this  case,  devote 
our  labour  to  the  education  of  the  young." 

And  the  use  of  education  as  a  missionary  agency  is  firmly 
supported  on  even  more  general  grounds.  The  report  on  edu- 
cation presented  to  the  Shanghai  Centenary  Missionary  Con- 
ference declared:  "When  we  reflect  that  there  is  a  Gospel  of 
creation,  and  a  Gospel  of  the  divine  government  of  the  world, 
as  well  as  a  Gospel  of  redemption,  we  see  that  the  found- 
ing of  the  school  and  college  is  a  necessary  duty  of  the 
missionary.  In  later  years,  since  men's  conceptions  as  to  the 
function  of  the  Christian  Church  in  the  world  have  been  en- 
larged, we  understand  that  we  are  not  only  working  for 
the  salvation  of  separate  individuals,  but  for  society  as  a 
whole.  Our  great  ideal  is  the  establishment  of  the  Kingdom 
of  God  upon  earth.  We  aim  at  influencing  all  the  strata  of 
society.  Christianity  is  to  save  the  world  and  to  bring  all 
human  relationships,  political,  social,  commercial,  and  industrial 
into  harmony  with  the  laws  of  God.  The  imparting  of  an 
enlightened  and  Christian  education  is  one  of  the  great  means 
for  the  accomplishment  of  this  end."  And  in  the  memorial 
to  the  home  Church  the  conference  justly  declared:  "  The  success 
of  such  institutions  (mission  schools  and  colleges)  will  have 
to  be  measured  not  simply  by  the  number  of  pupils  that  are 
baptised  in  the  course  of  each  year,  but  by  the  measure  of  our 
own  unhesitating  confidence  of  faith  that  such  work  is  of  itself, 
and  without  regard  to  results  that  can  be  tabulated  in  terms  of 
Church  membership,  a  work  '  worthy  of  God.'  We  must  believe 
earnestly,"  the  memorial  continues,  "  that  no  labours  done  on 
such  lines  for  His  glory  by  those  whom  He  Himself  calls  to 
such  service  will  be  in  vain  in  the  Lord ;  for  the  revealing  of 
the  wonders  of  His  ways,  whether  in  the  realms  of  nature, 
of  history,  of  science,  or  of  grace  and  redemption,  is,  in  truth, 
all  one  work,  and  it  is  constantly  so  represented  in  the  Bible." 


THE  MISSIONARY  AIM  AND  METHODS  97 

I  venture,  however,  to  raise  the  question  whether  these  statements 
do  not  mingle  the  work  of  the  Christian  state,  of  the  Christian 
Church,  and  of  the  foreign  mission.  The  Centenary  Conference 
recognises  some  distinction,  for  its  memorial  proceeds :  "  We 
freely  and  entirely  recognise  that  the  work  of  national  education 
in  China  cannot  possibly  be  undertaken  by  missions,  but  must  be 
carried  out  by  the  Chinese  themselves."  The  business  of  the  mis- 
sions is  to  give  inspiration  and  to  set  models.  But  they  are  to  do 
so,  we  must  maintain,  under  the  dominating  aim  of  foreign 
missions.  That  aim  was  clearly  and  unflinchingly  defined  by 
the  Deputation  of  the  Free  Church  of  Scotland  to  India  in 
1891  in  these  words:  "  We  must  lay  it  down  as  a  principle  that 
the  one  absorbing  aim  in  all  real  mission  work  is  to  bring  our 
fellow-men  to  know  Jesus  Christ  to  be  their  Saviour,  and  to 
profess  their  faith  in  Him  in  baptism.  The  mission  work  of 
the  Church  is  done  in  obedience  to  the  command  of  the  Lord, 
'  Go  ye  therefore  and  teach  all  nations,  baptising  them  in  the 
name  of  the  Father,  and  the  Son,  and  the  Holy  Ghost.'  Every 
mission,  and  all  mission  methods,  must  in  the  end  submit  to 
this  test.  Therefore,  in  discussing  the  mission  value  of  educa- 
tional missions,  we  must  put  aside  all  arguments  drawn  from 
the  spread  of  humanitarian  and  civilising  ideas.  These  are  wel- 
come accompaniments,  but,  after  all,  the  question  is — Is  all 
this  educational  work  calculated  to  draw  men  to  faith  in  Jesus 
Christ  as  their  Saviour,  and  to  a  profession  of  that  faith  in 
baptism  ?  " 

There  are  those  who  say  that  it  has  not  had  this  result. 
General  Booth  is  emphatic  in  his  condemnation.  "  But  it  is 
said,"  he  declares,  "  we  must  educate  the  people  in  order  that 
they  may  read  their  Bibles.  But  alas!  in  teaching  them  to 
read  their  Bibles  you  have  enabled  them  to  read  the  works  of 
unbelievers  and  doubters  which  you  meet  in  so-called  Christian 
literature.  I  have  an  impression  that  for  every  one,  who,  through 
his  boasted  education,  is  to-day  reading  his  Bible,  a  hundred 
are  lost  to  all  regard  of  God  and  religion.  I  believe  thoroughly 
and  say  deliberately  that  so  far  as  the  salvation  of  souls  is 
concerned,  the  Christian  Church  in  India  has  by  her  colleges 


98  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

and  schools  done  more  harm  than  good."  That  is  one  witness 
against  a  thousand.  Neither  schools  nor  preachings  have  yielded 
the  longed-for  results,  but  so  far  as  the  high  castes  are  con- 
cerned, what  converts  there  are  have  been  won  through  the 
schools,  and  of  India  as  a  whole  it  is  maintained  by  those  who 
know,  that  whether  we  have  in  view  the  primary  aim  or  the 
ultimate  results  of  missionary  work,  Christ  has  been  most  deeply 
and  most  widely  made  known  through  the  schools. 

Nevertheless,  it  is  as  earnestly  maintained  by  those  in  the 
schools,  as  well  as  by  those  out  of  them,  that  the  great  need 
of  mission  work  in  India  is  such  an  enlarged  equipment  and 
such  a  reorganisation  as  will  make  the  missionary  aim  actually 
dominating  and  sovereign.  All  missionary  education  should  be 
uncompromisingly  and  pervasively  Christian.  That  will  mean 
that  it  will  be  honest  as  educational  work,  the  best  and  most 
thorough  educational  work  that  can  be  given,  and  that  it  will 
be  adapted  to  the  conditions  in  which  it  is  given,  making  men 
leaders  of  their  own  people  and  not  denationalised  and  forceless 
copies  of  foreign  ideals.  Whatever  may  be  the  final  judgment 
Vo  be  pronounced  upon  the  policy  of  English  education  estab- 
lished in  India  as  the  consequence  of  Duff's  influence  and 
Macaulay's  minute,  a  policy  of  which  Sir  Henry  Craik,  Secretary 
of  the  Scotch  Education  Department  for  many  years,  wrote 
in  1908,  after  a  study  of  the  Indian  schools :  "  In  thinking 
that  in  its  main  lines  it  is  hopelessly  wrong,  I  am  only  repeating 
the  opinion  expressed  to  me  universally  by  all  the  wisest  Anglo- 
Indians  and  natives  whom  I  have  seen,  and  impressed  on  me 
by  my  own  experience.  I  can  only  describe  that  impression 
by  saying  that  there  is  a  sort  of  mildew  lying  over  the  work," — 
(Punjab  Mission  Nezvs,  February  20,  1908,  p.  4) — missions 
in  all  lands  should  avoid  in  their  educational  work  the  loss  of 
their  nationalistic  purpose  to  make  Christianity  at  home  in  the 
language  and  natural  genius  of  each  people,  as  well  as  the  loss 
of  their  primary  aim  to  make  Christ  known  to  men  in  order  to 
win  men  to  Christ's  faith  and  Christ's  service. 

Those    philanthropies    and    humane    services    by    which    the 
Spirit  of  Christ  in  men  is  sure  to  utter  itself  constitute  the 


THE  MISSIONARY  AIM  AND  METHODS  99 

fourth  method  of  the  foreign  mission.  These  expressions  of 
the  Christian  Spirit  are  irrepressible,  and  they  are  characteristic. 
Whether  medical  missions  and  charitable  activities  are  proper 
agencies  of  the  missionary  enterprise  are  senseless  questions. 
They  cannot  be  prevented.  If  missionaries  see  widows  burned 
and  children  slaughtered  and  villages  ravaged  in  slave  raids, 
and  famine  orphans  and  Christ's  sheep  scattered  abroad  and 
suffering  with  no  man  caring,  they  are  going  to  care,  and 
agitation  and  action  are  as  certain  as  the  love  of  Christ.  And 
such  services  are  themselves  manifestations  of  Christ.  They  are 
original  to  Christianity.  The  non-Christian  peoples  recognise 
this.  "  There  is  plenty  of  scope  for  active  work,"  said  the  lead- 
ing social  reform  paper  of  Madras,  "  not  only  for  policemen, 
but  for  earnest  men  and  women,  of  course  among  Christians. 
Our  countrymen  must  pardon  us  for  this  piece  of  plain  speak- 
ing, as  they  have  never  shown  the  least  anxiety  to  reclaim  the 
fallen.  For  '  once  fallen,  always  fallen  '  would  appear  to  be  their 
maxim." — (Quoted  by  Slater,  "  Missions  and  Sociology,"  p. 
34.)  All  pure  unselfishness  preaches  Christ.  Indeed,  it  is  the 
only  way  He  can  be  preached.  No  words  can  speak  Christ 
to  men  as  words  can  speak  Him  when  pictured  also  in  deeds. 
Many  of  the  non-Christian  peoples  are  kindergarten  peoples 
and  need  to  be  taught  by  object  lessons.  Acts  must  put  content 
into  words  for  them.  The  love  of  Christ  must  be  interpreted 
to  them  by  the  vision  of  a  man  in  whom  Christ  is  loving 
them. 

But  universal  charity  is  not  the  aim  of  the  foreign  missionary 
movement.  It  cannot  heal  or  feed  the  world  any  more  than  it 
can  educate  it,  and  it  is  not  its  business  to  try  to  do  so.  All 
that  the  Church  is  giving  or  would  need  to  give  to  discharge 
its  distinctive  foreign  mission  work  would  not  suffice  to  meet 
the  physical  sufferings  of  the  Yangtse  valley  or  to  educate 
Bengal.  The  philanthropic  work  of  missions  is  to  be  subjected 
to  its  aim,  just  as  all  other  methods.  (1)  The  business  of  each 
missionary  in  his  life  and  of  each  mission  in  its  policy  is  to 
make  Christ  known.  He  and  it  are  to  do  such  loving  deeds 
as  will  effect  this,  and  as  they  cannot  help  doing  if  Christ  be 


ioo  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

in  them.  There  will  be  difference  of  view  among  them  as  to 
what  this  involves.    David  Hill's  life  reveals  one  of  these: 

Last  evening  I  had  a  conversation  with  on  the  sub- 
ject of  charity.  His  views  differ  widely  from  mine,  though  we 
both  believe  that  we  are  following  our  Lord.  He  sees  the  evils 
which  have  arisen  from  distribution  of  charity  to  be  so  great 
that,  unless  in  cases  of  actual  starvation,  he  would  refuse  to 
give,  and  even  then  in  a  manner  disconnected  as  far  as  possible 
from  evangelistic  work.  The  history  of  missionary  work  in 
China,  and  the  East  generally,  he  thinks  is  so  strongly  corrobora- 
tive of  this  view,  that  he  would  hold  it  as  simply  ruinous  to  go  in 
for  any  large  and  widespread  plan  of  benevolence  in  connection 
with  the  work  of  preaching  the  Gospel.  In  favour  of  this  view 
he  quotes  the  life  of  our  Lord.  Twice  only,  he  says,  did  He 
give  supplies  of  food,  and  after  one  of  these  distributions  refused 
to  repeat  the  act  because  of  the  impurity  of  the  motives  of  those 
professedly  seeking  His  instruction.  With  the  affluence  of  divine 
power  at  His  disposal,  he  asks  why  but  these  two  times?  seeing 
there  were  so  many  thousands  of  poor  around. 

I  need  hardly  say  that  this  view  is  strangely  out  of  accord 
with  my  reading  of  our  Lord's  life.  Its  fundamental  principle, 
its  Alpha  and  Omega,  was  sacrifice  for  others,  and  that  not  only 
of  preaching  time,  hours  of  study,  etc.,  but  of  comforts  and 
enjoyments.  Given  a  poverty  like  that  of  our  Lord,  Who  had 
not  where  to  lay  His  head,  I  can  understand  the  limitation  of 
charity  distribution  to  a  few  isolated  instances.  But  where  all 
one's  surroundings  are  so  comfortable,  and  where  hundreds 
around  are  so  wretched,  I  can  no  more  conceive  of  our  Lord's 
living  so  than  I  can  conceive  of  His  abdicating  His  throne  and 
disowning  His  cause.   .    .    . 

How  He  healed  the  sick !    "  But,"  inquired  ,  "  did  He 

ever  heal  them  irrespective  of  their  moral  preparedness  for  His 
teaching?"  I  asked  what  meant  His  teaching  about  the  Good 
Samaritan,  and  I  might  add  His  requirement  to  love  and  do 
good  even  to  our  enemies, — not  only  those  in  suffering,  but  our 
enemies  even.  But  holding  views  which  mean  universal  love, 
the  loving  one's  neighbor  as  oneself,  implies  on  the  part  of  a 
single  man  no  heavy  encumbrance  of  wealth,  for  he  has  no  chil- 
dren to  provide  for  and  no  responsibility  on  that  score.  This 
free,  full  outpouring  of  himself  is  the  only  consistent  course 
for  one  so  situated,  and  this  honestly  done,  it  seems  to  me,  will 
tell  not  against  but  for  the  Kingdom  of  God, — if  Christianity 
means  anything  at  all.     Looking  at  the  whole  subject,  not  in 


THE  MISSIONARY  AIM  AND  METHODS        101 

the  brief  course  of  a  few  months  or  years,  but  judging  of  it  in 
the  light  of  eternity,  and  of  the  Spirit  of  Life  and  Triumph  of 

Jesus,  I  see  very  differently  from  ,  and  shall  be  judged 

for  my  convictions  as  he  for  his. 

Each  man  must  do  what  he  believes  to  be  right  in  the  light 
of  the  supreme  missionary  aim.  He  must  show  forth  Christ. 
(2)  In  the  second  place,  Christ  is  to  be  made  known  for  the 
winning  of  men  to  Christian  discipleship.  Our  philanthropic 
work,  accordingly,  must  be  directed  to  this  end.  Hospitals,  relief 
work,  orphanages,  moral  reform  should  be  openly  in  Christ's 
name  and  should  be  followed  up  so  that  their  fruitage  may  be 
gathered  into  the  Christian  fold.  (3)  And  in  the  third  place, 
all  such  work  must  have  in  view  the  naturalisation  of  Chris- 
tianity, not  the  parasitical  dependence  of  the  people  upon  charity 
from  without.  Our  Lord  did  not  go  about  as  a  mere  healer, 
nor  even  predominantly  as  a  philanthropist.  In  nothing  is  His 
divine  wisdom  and  self-restraint  more  clearly  seen  than  in  His 
refusal  to  become  simply  the  philanthropist,  feeding  all  hunger, 
abolishing  all  need.  Paul  seems  purposely  to  have  avoided 
all  miracle-working  and  personal  charity.  The  Saviour's  pur- 
pose and  Paul's  was  not  to  meet  the  passing  physical  need  of 
one  century,  but  to  plant  in  the  world  the  eternal  life  of  Chris- 
tianity, those  living  principles  which  would  lead  each  century 
to  meet  its  own  needs.  The  energies  by  which  St.  Paul  natural- 
ised Christianity  throughout  the  Roman  Empire  might  have  been 
exhausted  in  the  effort  to  cope  with  the  physical  evils  of  the 
one  city  of  Antioch.  He  had  a  greater  work  to  do  and  was 
strong  enough  not  to  sacrifice  the  best  on  the  altar  of  a  good. 
The  aim  of  foreign  missions  is  not  to  care  for  all  the  industrial, 
social,  economic,  and  physical  ills  of  the  non-Christian  world, 
but  to  plant  there  the  living  seeds  of  the  Gospel  of  the  incarnate 
God.  That  Gospel  is  to  be  the  healing  of  the  world  in  God's 
own  day.  Foreign  missions  will  have  passed  away  long  before 
the  dawning  of  that  day. 

Beside  these  four  great  methods  of  which  I  have  spoken, 
there  are  others,  as  many  as  men  can  devise  and  as  conditions 
demand,  entirely  legitimate,  urgently  demanded,  requiring  only 


102  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

that  they  minister  to  the  missionary  aim, — the  circulation  of  the 
Scriptures  and  Christian  literature,  the  translation  of  good  books, 
especially  home  reading  books  and  educational  text-books,  the 
establishment  of  medical  schools,  the  cultivation  of  new  indus- 
tries and  the  improvement  of  old,  and  many  more,  but  any  of 
these  are  not  appropriate  activities  of  foreign  missions  if  they 
do  not  make  Christ  known  as  the  Saviour  and  Lord  of  life, 
or  if  they  make  men  dependent  instead  of  free. 

It  is  not  unlikely  that  as  we  work  out  this  aim,  we  shall  come 
upon  situations  where  its  attainment  will  be  long  delayed.  A 
co-operative  assistance,  or  even  guidance,  may  be  required  for 
a  long  time,  and  it  may  be  found  that  this  help  can  be  given 
better  through  the  continuance  of  the  foreign  missionary  enter- 
prise as  such  than  by  any  new  arrangement.  In  some  lands  the 
absence  of  religious  liberty,  or  the  presence  of  social  or  political 
conditions  which  stifle  the  independent  influence  of  the  new 
Churches,  or  the  slow  growth  of  the  number  of  Christians,  or 
their  slow  development  in  Christian  character,  may  make  both 
the  realisation  and  also  the  clear  discernment  of  the  true  aim 
difficult.  But  there  are  always  perplexities  surrounding  high 
and  distinct  aims,  and  we  shall  be  hindered  and  not  helped  in 
the  work  of  missions  if  we  have  no  clear  aim,  or  if,  hav- 
ing one,  we  lose  sight  of  it  because  at  times  it  seems  merely 
theoretical. 

In  pursuing  the  missionary  aim  and  adapting  methods  thereto, 
three  great  sets  of  problems  arise.  First,  in  offering  to  men 
the  revelation  and  life  of  God  in  Christ  we  meet  their  own 
religious  conceptions.  Are  these  not  already  adequate,  many 
ask  us?  If  not,  what  is  the  true  attitude  of  the  witness  of 
Christianity  to  these  other  religions?  Second,  these  people  have 
their  own  social  and  political  institutions;  missionaries  who  go 
out  to  them  go  as  citizens  of  foreign  governments  and  represent- 
atives of  other  ideals.  What  is  to  be  the  relation  of  the  preachers 
of  the  new  religion  to  the  governments  from  which  they  come 
and  to  the  governments  to  which  they  go?  How  is  the  new 
religion  to  relate  itself  to  the  organised  life  of  the  people  to 
whom  it  is  offered?     How  are  its  new  adherents  to  meet  the 


THE  MISSIONARY  AIM  AND  METHODS         103 

inevitable  consequences  of  their  new  situation?  And  thirdly, 
Christianity  is  not  pure  individualism.  It  is  a  corporate  relation- 
ship. Men  who  come  to  Christ  come  into  Christ  and  into  a 
united  life  with  all  who  are  Christ's.  They  are  members  of 
His  body.  And  that  body  has  a  visible  form,  confused  and 
imperfect,  but  necessary.  Those  who  are  won  as  Christ's  dis- 
ciples must  be  organised  into  Churches  for  the  confirmation  of 
their  own  faith,  for  the  enlargement  of  their  own  knowledge, 
for  the  sake  of  human  service,  in  order  that  Christianity  may 
be  made  indigenous  and  enduring  in  the  life  of  the  nation. 
What  should  be  our  ideals  for  such  a  Church?  How  is  it  to 
be  established?  What  shall  be  its  fundamental  moral  and  spirit- 
ual standards,  what  its  essential  characteristics,  what  its  rela- 
tions to  the  missionaries  who  founded  it  and  the  Churches  from 
which  they  came  forth?  What  are  to  be  the  responsibilities 
of  these  new  Churches  toward  their  nations,  and  how  are  they 
to  be  truly  set  each  in  its  own  national  life?  These  three  great 
sets  of  problems  we  are  to  consider  separately,  and  in  the 
reverse  order. 

The  judgments  we  shall  form  regarding  them,  however,  will 
depend  on  whether  or  not  we  are  prepared  to  accept  the  con- 
ception of  the  aim  of  the  foreign  missionary  enterprise  main- 
tained here.  Some  will  take  exception  to  this  conception  as 
too  broad,  others  as  too  narrow.  There  are  some  who  hold 
that  the  one  business  of  missions  is  the  oral  preaching  of  the 
Gospel,  that  no  institutions  are  legitimate,  save  churches  and 
chapels,  that  we  are  to  bear  our  witness  to  the  facts  of  the 
Gospel  and  pass  on.  Others  will  allow  for  patient  reiteration 
and  repeated  itineration,  but  the  one  allowable  agency,  they  hold, 
is  preaching  to  companies  or  to  individuals  with  a  view  to  the 
conversion  of  men.  On  the  other  hand,  are  those  who  hold 
that  the  view  we  have  taken  is  far  too  narrow,  that  the  business 
of  missions  is  to  Christianise  the  world,  that  national  conversion 
is  more  important  than  individual  conversion.  Dr.  Timothy 
Richard  has  been  one  of  the  most  eloquent  advocates  of  this 
larger  view  of  missionary  policy.  His  thought  is  that  we  should 
transfer  the  emphasis  from  trying  to  convert  individual  China- 


104  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

men  by  preaching  the  Gospel,  and  should  grasp  the  present  op- 
portunity to  reform  the  Empire  by  larger  methods. 

After  over  sixty  years'  experience  [he  wrote  shortly  after 
the  Boxer  troubles  had  subsided]  missionaries  have  discovered 
that  there  is  a  way  of  influencing  the  millions  of  China  through 
the  Government,  through  the  leading  Viceroys  and  Governors, 
and  through  the  gentry  and  students  which  has  no  parallel  in 
any  other  part  of  the  world,  viz.,  by  systematic  distribution  of 
carefully  prepared  literature  and  frequent  communication  with 
the  authorities.  The  marvellous  effect  of  our  literature  is  known 
to  you,  the  influence  of  frequent  telegraphic  communication  with 
the  central  Government,  Viceroys,  and  Governors  by  competent 
and  experienced  persons  is  also  enormous.  But  this  latest  phase 
of  influencing  these  involves  occasional  use  of  scientific  instru- 
ments, like  the  cinematograph,  wireless  telegraphy,  illustrated 
books,  etc.,  etc.,  to  give  an  idea  of  every  phase  of  Christian 
progress  throughout  the  world.  The  "  Gunboat  policy  "  produces 
fear  and  suspicion  and  the  awful  catastrophes  of  last  year,  while 
this  friendly,  personal  intercourse  produces  love  and  confidence, 
a  great  desire  for  reform  and  regeneration,  and  feelings  of  good- 
will to  all  the  world. 

The  old  methods  of  mission  work  aimed  at  influencing  a 
village  or  a  town  or  at  most  comparatively  few  towns  by  each 
mission  on  the  model  of  home  work.  But  this  method  aims  at 
nothing  less  than  influencing  every  town  and  village  throughout 
the  Empire,  not  by  placing  a  foreign  missionary  in  every  place 
(a  plan  which  usually  excites  the  natural  opposition  of  the 
Chinese  much  more  than  placing  an  Italian  priest  in  every  town 
in  England  would),  but  by  enlisting  the  sympathy  of  the  Chinese 
themselves  with  Christian  principles,  which  save  and  ennoble 
individuals  and  nations,  so  that  they  themselves  may  carry  the 
message  enthusiastically  to  their  fellow-countrymen,  and  establish 
schools,  colleges,  and  churches.  We  have  seen  it  work  marvel- 
lously already  on  a  limited  scale,  but  we  want  to  extend  it  so 
as  to  embrace  every  province  till  the  whole  Empire  is  regenerated 
on  Christian  lines. 

Great  as  the  influence  of  other  methods  has  been,  it  is  ac- 
knowledged by  all  who  have  carefully  studied  this  method  that 
it  is  immeasurably  superior.  Moreover,  it  was  not  possible  a 
generation  ago,  it  may  not  be  possible  a  generation  hence,  but 
it  is  possible  now.  "  Now  is  the  accepted  time,  now  is  the  day 
of  salvation  "  for  China. 

We    appeal    to    missionary    societies    individually    and    col- 


THE  MISSIONARY  AIM  AND  METHODS         105 

lectively,  we  appeal  to  Christian  laymen  individually  and  col- 
lectively. Consider  carefully  whether  it  is  not  better  to  follow 
providential  openings  like  this  than  to  follow  old  and  compara- 
tively unsuccessful  methods  which  were  adapted  chiefly  to  former 
times  and  conditions. 

And  the  Rev.  Bernard  Lucas  has  earnestly  argued,  out  of 
a  rich  experience  of  mission  work  in  India,  for  a  wider  con- 
ception of  the  missionary  aim  than  has  been  set  forth  here. 
Let  me  present  his  view  in  his  own  words: 

To  the  older  theology,  India  was  a  ship  on  the  rocks,  and 
the  missionary  was  the  lifeboatman  engaged  in  the  task  of  pick- 
ing up  the  few  survivors  who  were  swept  within  his  reach, 
and  who,  if  he  failed  to  reach  them,  were  carried  away  to  eternal 
destruction.  To  the  modern  mind,  on  the  other  hand,  India  is 
a  ship  which  is  salvable,  not  on  the  rocks,  but  aground ;  and 
the  real  missionary  enterprise  is  not  that  of  picking  up  a  few 
survivors  from  a  hopeless  wreck,  but  of  bringing  the  ship  into 
port  with  all  on  board.  There  is  sufficient  truth  in  the  illustra- 
tion to  justify  its  use  for  the  purpose  of  marking  the  contrast 
between  the  newer  and  the  older  conception  of  the  Church's 
task.  The  missionary  who  set  off  in  his  lifeboat  has  got  on 
board,  examined  the  condition  of  the  vessel,  sounded  the  depth 
of  water  in  the  hold,  seen  the  crowded  condition  of  the  decks, 
and  been  forced  to  the  conclusion  that  the  lifeboat  is  inadequate 
to  the  task.  If  the  people  are  to  be  saved,  the  ship  itself  must 
be  brought  into  port.  Above  all,  he  has  realised  that  the  people 
zvill  not  leave  the  ship.  This  last  fact  must  be  grasped  by  the 
Christian  Church  with  all  that  it  signifies,  if  its  cry  of  India  for 
Christ  is  to  have  any  real  meaning.  The  great  work  amongst 
the  outcaste  population  has  been  the  pressing  work  of  picking 
up  those  who  have  been  swept  overboard,  and  of  whose  welfare 
those  who  remained  on  board  were  callously  indifferent.  We 
have  landed  them  on  sandbanks  and  desert  islands,  and  supplied 
them  with  as  much  of  our  stores  as  we  could  give,  but  the 
question  of  their  future  is  one  of  grave  anxiety.  It  has  been 
a  noble  work,  and  worthy  of  all  the  consecrated  and  heroic  effort 
which  has  been  spent  upon  it,  but  it  is  not  the  salvation  of  India. 
We  must  not  shut  our  eyes  to  the  fact  that  the  India  we  have 
come  to  save  is  a  ship  which  is  aground;  and  that  the  true  task 
which  confronts  us  is  that  of  getting  her  floated,  her  damages 
repaired,  her  disorganised  crew  and  distracted  passengers  organ- 


106  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

ised  and  encouraged,  so  that  she  may  proceed  on  her  way  to 
the  port  to  which  she  is  bound.  Nothing  short  of  that  will 
satisfy  the  soul  of  India,  and  nothing  short  of  that  will  fulfil 
the  sacred  obligation  which  rests  upon  the  Church  of  Christ. 
The  illustration  here  used  is  only  an  illustration,  and  its  details 
can  easily  be  criticised,  but  it  fairly  represents  the  difference 
between  the  newer  and  the  older  views  of  missionary  work,  and 
it  is  to  emphasise  that  difference  that  it  is  alone  employed.  .  .  . 

This  changed  standpoint  will  review  our  methods  in  the  light 
of  its  conception  of  the  larger  aim  which  it  contemplates.  It 
will  insist  that  the  true  aim  of  the  Western  Church  is  to  give 
to  India  a  deeper  religious  life,  and  not  what  it  may  conceive 
to  be  more  correct  religious  opinions;  and  it  will  demand  that 
the  larger  aim  shall  occupy  the  paramount  position.  It  would 
be  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  in  thus  emphasising  the  distinction 
between  creed  and  life,  the  modern  mind  fails  to  appreciate  the 
connection  which  exists  between  the  two,  or  that  it  in  any  sense 
confounds  mere  civilisation  with  that  which  in  contradistinction 
may  be  called  Christianisation.  It  distinguishes,  however,  be- 
tween thought  and  the  expression  of  thought,  between  the  trans- 
lation of  words  and  the  translation  of  ideas,  between  creeds  and 
the  truth  every  creed  of  necessity  limits  and  confines.  It  believes 
that  thought  can  be  and  ought  to  be  propagated ;  but  it  equally 
believes  that  its  expressions  must  not  be  translated,  except  from 
the  original,  and  that  the  translation  must  invariably  be  idiomatic. 
Christian  truth  can  be  and  ought  to  be  propagated  in  India, 
where  it  will  inevitably  produce  a  richer  and  fuller  religious  life. 
It  is  India's  supreme  need,  and  apart  from  that  truth,  her  re- 
ligious life  shows  no  sign  now,  as  it  has  shown  no  sign  for  ages, 
of  any  quickening  whatever.  Christian  truth,  however,  must  be 
left  to  find  its  own  expression ;  the  translation  must  be  into 
the  vernacular  of  to-day,  not  into  the  Sanscrit  of  yesterday; 
and  it  must  be  perfectly  idiomatic.  The  task  of  the  Western 
Church,  a  task  for  which  it  has  been  destined  by  the  providence 
of  God,  and  for  which  it  is  not  yet  fully  qualified,  is  to  propagate 
Christian  thought  in  terms  of  life-value.  To  that  task  everything 
must  be  subordinated,  and  to  its  successful  accomplishment  all 
our  missionary  methods  should  be  devised. 

And  in  a  review  of  Bishop  Mylne's  "  Missions  to  Hindus," 
Mr.  Lucas  speaks  even  more  plainly : 

It  is  probably  too  much  to  hope  for  at  present,  but  the  time 
will  doubtless  arrive  when  what  are  called  mission  statistics  will 


THE  MISSIONARY  AIM  AND  METHODS         107 

be  found  only  in  census  reports.  In  dealing  with  the  qualitative 
results,  Dr.  Mylne  limits  his  survey  to  the  Indian  Christian 
community,  and  seems  hardly  to  recognise  what  in  many  respects 
are  the  far  more  significant  results  in  the  changed  thought  and 
feeling  of  the  nation  as  a  whole.  This  is  a  very  serious  defect 
in  the  book,  and  it  is  more  serious  because  it  reveals  a  failure 
on  his  part  to  recognise  the  working  of  the  Spirit  outside  all 
ecclesiastical  organisations.  Apparently  no  work  which  does  not 
bring  definite  results,  in  the  shape  of  additions  to  the  Christian 
community,  is  worthy  of  consideration  in  the  discussion  of  mis- 
sionary methods.  That  this  is  no  unfair  criticism  of  his  position 
may  be  seen  by  the  estimate  he  forms  of  the  strictly  educational 
mission,  which,  he  distinctly  tells  us,  "  has  had  its  day  and  done 
its  work."  His  chapter  on  Educational  Missions  is  vitiated 
throughout  by  this  failure  to  recognise  any  other  results  than 
those  of  additions  to  the  Church.  The  real  fact  is  that  in  the 
greater  task  of  bringing  India  to  Christ,  as  contrasted  with  the 
very  much  smaller  one  of  gaining  converts,  there  is  no  method 
which  has  had  a  greater  result  than  education,  and  missionary 
education  in  particular.  It  is  the  larger  and  not  the  smaller 
aim  which  should  dominate  missionary  policy,  and  in  proportion 
as  that  larger  aim  influences  our  missionary  methods  will  the 
coming  of  the  kingdom  of  Christ  in  India  be  hastened. —  (L.  M. 
S.  Chronicle,  July,  1908.) 

On  the  general  question  involved,  I  venture  to  make  several 
remarks,  observing  first  that  these  views  have  their  own  truth 
but  appear  to  us  to  commingle  the  aim  of  missions  with  the  total 
purposes  of  Christianity. 

1.  To  spread  what  we  know  as  Christian  civilisation  over 
the  world  is  not  the  aim  of  foreign  missions,  nor  is  it  an  ade- 
quate aim  for  the  Christian  Church  to  cherish  for  her  mission 
to  the  world.  Christian  civilisation  owes  what  is  good  in  it 
to  Christianity,  but  that  civilisation  is  distinctly  Occidental,  not 
universal,  and  it  is  seamed  with  evil.  It  is  an  open  question 
whether,  apart  from  its  distinctly  Christian  elements,  it  has  not 
done  more  harm  than  good  to  the  non-Christian  people. —  (Cust, 
"  Mission  Methods,"  p.  96.)  And  if  so,  we  had  better  devote 
our  far  too  inadequate  resources  in  the  missionary  movement  to 
carrying  to  the  world  that  knowledge  of  Christ  in  which  is  no  ele- 
ment of  evil  and  which  will  mean  life  and  not  death  to  the  world. 


108  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

2.  The  conversion  of  a  nation  does  mean  more  than  the  con- 
version of  the  individuals  composing  the  nation,  but  it  cannot 
mean  less  than  the  conversion  of  some  of  these  individuals, 
and  the  real  conversion  of  any  nation  would  mean  the  devotion 
of  all  its  life  and  of  all  its  lives  to  God.  That  will  be  the 
ultimate  result  of  missionary  effort,  but  long  before  that  result 
will  have  been  attained,  foreign  missions  will  have  ceased.  In- 
deed, the  condition  of  our  home  lands  raises  in  our  minds 
the  question  whether  that  result  will  be  reached  until  the  prom- 
ised return  of  our  Lord  and  Saviour  Jesus  Christ  from  Heaven. 
I  do  not  believe  that  it  will.  Neither  Scotland  nor  America 
holds  out  the  faintest  hope  that  it  can.  But  even  if  that  result 
is  to  be  attained  now  by  us,  it  is  not  the  responsibility  of  foreign 
missions  to  attain  it.  It  is  the  work  of  the  Christian  Church, 
which  it  is  the  business  of  missions  to  found  and  to  which  it  must 
give  ideals.  The  Church  is  to  bear  the  burden  of  national 
Christianisation.  Of  course,  when  the  mission  is  doing  the  work 
of  the  Church,  as  it  must  when  the  Church  is  just  beginning, 
as  it  must  not  beyond  a  certain  limit  and  after  the  Church  has 
begun,  then  the  responsibility  of  the  Church  may  be  confessedly 
taken  over  by  the  mission.  But  that  is  just  the  evil  from  which 
Christianity  in  some  lands  is  suffering.  There  is  no  great  in- 
digenous Church,  and  there  is  not  likely  to  be  one  so  long  as  the 
missions  forget  their  aim  and  duty  to  create  one,  and  cover  over 
their  failure  by  undertaking  to  do  themselves  the  work  of  the 
Church. 

3.  Where  the  aim  of  missions  is  hard  of  realisation,  as  it  is 
in  India,  in  no  small  measure  because  the  ostracism  of  caste  has 
denationalised  the  Christian  constituency  and  the  dependent 
political  life  of  the  nation  has  depressed  and  stifled  the  indigenous 
Christian  life,  the  work  of  the  mission  will  inevitably  take  on  the 
permanent  character  of  the  work  of  the  Church,  all  the  more 
because  the  people  are  so  poor  and  missions  seek  to  carry  them 
forward  in  one  century  over  the  development  which  with  the 
West  covered  from  ten  to  twenty.  We  must  make  allowance 
for  this,  and  stretch  our  methods  perhaps  beyond  our  aim, 
but  we  must  not  abandon  our  aim,  nor  for  one  moment  cease 


THE  MISSIONARY  AIM  AND  METHODS         109 

seeking  to  realise  it.  We  may  carry  on  work  which  does  not 
actually  realise  it,  and  justify  our  doing  so  on  the  ground  of 
the  good  which  we  are  accomplishing  and  the  preparation  we 
are  making  for  a  future  larger  good,  and  be  fully  warranted  in 
this  view,  but  I  do  not  believe  that  we  are  justified  in  abandoning 
our  aim  or  subordinating  the  ideal  of  converted  men  and  an 
indigenous  Church  to  the  ideal  of  a  reformed  and  enlightened 
nation. 

4.  The  issue  raised  is  the  perennial  issue  of  the  individual 
or  the  society,  and  the  position  which  is  unhesitatingly  taken 
in  these  lectures  is  that  the  primary  aim  of  foreign  missions  is 
to  reach  individuals  and  to  make  Churches  out  of  them,  and 
through  these  Churches  to  redeem  the  life  of  humanity.  All 
that  can  be  done,  meanwhile,  for  society,  which  will  make  Christ 
known  to  it  and  in  it,  will  be  done.  When  individuals  will  not 
be  reached,  the  enterprise  will  not  let  go.  It  will  strike  in  its 
roots,  and  sap  and  mine  and  wait.  All  that  is  effected  in  the 
amelioration  of  human  conditions,  in  the  extension  of  knowl- 
edge, in  the  softening  of  prejudice,  in  the  infiltration  of  truth 
about  God  and  the  world  into  the  opinions  of  nations  and  the 
philosophies  of  religious  systems,  in  the  spread  of  human  sym- 
pathy and  the  improvement  of  international  relations, — all  the 
rich  fruitage  which  is  the  inevitable  consequence  of  living  Christ, 
of  making  Him  known,  and  all  of  which  is  a  sign  of  the  larger 
coming  of  the  knowledge  of  the  Son  of  God — in  all  this  missions 
will  rejoice.  They  will  press  upon  the  world  the  duty  of  sup- 
porting them  because  of  this  fruitage,  fruitage  which  they  can 
yield  in  unequalled  purity  and  fulness,  but  nevertheless  their 
aim  will  be  the  definite  religious  aim  of  making  Christ  known 
to  all  the  world  as  the  Saviour  and  Lord  of  men,  with  a  view 
to  making  men  His  disciples,  uniting  them  in  the  life  and  min- 
istry of  the  visible  Church,  and  in  them  and  in  that  Church 
domiciling  Christianity  in  all  the  races  of  humanity.  This  is 
the  first  stage  in  the  long  journey  toward  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven  among  men.  It  is  the  Church's  primary  duty,  and  her 
noblest  privilege,  and  the  condition  of  her  power  and  prosperity 
at  home,  to  attempt  to  complete  this  stage  in  our  generation. 


Ill 

MISSIONS  AND  THE  NATIVE  CHURCHES 


Ill 

MISSIONS  AND  THE  NATIVE  CHURCHES 

THE  greatest  fact  in  modern  politics  has  been  the  growth 
of  nationalism.  The  history  of  the  past  century  has 
been  the  history  of  the  arrangement  of  national  boun- 
daries, the  development  of  national  ambitions,  the  formation 
of  national  policies,  the  definition  of  national  responsibilities,  the 
sharpened  distinction  of  national  characters,  the  realisation  and 
resolute  acceptance  of  national  destinies.  With  all  the  emphasis 
which  systems  of  ethics  and  of  political  philosophy  have  given 
on  the  one  hand  to  the  individual,  and  on  the  other  to  humanity, 
it  remains  true  that  the  dominant  principle  of  modern  history 
has  been  the  ideal  of  nationalism. 

In  Europe,  assuredly,  as  Professor  Reinsch  has  said  in  his 
excellent  little  book  on  "  World  Politics," 

The  great  modern  development  has  been  the  principle  of  na- 
tionality. When  we  view  the  historical  development  of  the  world 
since  the  Renaissance,  we  find  that  the  one  principle  about  which 
the  wealth  of  facts  can  be  harmoniously  grouped  is  that  of 
nationalism.  Ever  since  the  world-state  ideals  of  the  Middle 
Ages  were  left  behind,  this  principle  has  been  the  touchstone 
of  true  statesmanship.  The  reputation  of  a  statesman,  as  well 
as  his  permanent  influence  on  human  affairs,  depends  on  his 
power  to  understand  and  aid  the  historical  evolution,  from  out 
the  mediaeval  chaos,  of  strong  national  states.  Genius  could  not 
countervail  this  law  of  development.  Even  Napoleon  was  un- 
successful whenever  his  policy  opposed  the  innate  strength  of 
nationalism.  As  we  enumerate  the  great  statesmen  whose  per- 
sonalities have  left  a  permanent  impress  on  the  institutions  of 
their  countries,  such  as  Louis  XI,  Wolsey,  Elizabeth,  Richelieu, 
Henry  IV,  Cromwell,  Chatham,  Cavour,  and  Bismarck,  we  find 
that  their  title  to  greatness  rests  upon  the  manner  in  which  they 

113 


ii4  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

aided  a  national  state  in  realising  its  independence  and  developing 
its  character. 

Especially  during  the  nineteenth  century  has  nationalism  been 
a  conscious  influence  in  political  life.  The  nations  that,  at  its 
beginning,  had  partly  achieved  their  independent  political  exist- 
ence, have  since  been  striving  for  the  attainment  of  completely 
self-sufficing  life;  while  those  races  that  regard  themselves  as 
unjustly  held  in  bondage  by  others  have  been  engaged  in  a  stern 
struggle  to  obtain  national  independence.  Success  has  not  been 
the  equal  portion  of  the  striving  races.  Germany  and  Italy, 
which  have  most  nearly  approached  their  ideal,  are  still  looking 
yearningly  toward  the  completion  of  their  work  by  the  addition 
of  Austria  and  Trieste  to  the  national  states  to  which  they  re- 
spectively belong.  The  Hungarians,  whose  nationalism  is  most 
violently  enthusiastic,  have  carried  their  nativistic  policy  so  far 
as  to  destroy  the  economic  resources  of  other  parts  of  the 
Austrian  Empire,  as,  for  instance,  the  forests  of  Dalmatia,  in 
order  to  protect  their  own  economic  existence.  Other  races  have 
been  less  successful,  either  from  a  lack  of  political  genius  or 
from  the  overpowering  strength  of  their  political  superiors.  An 
aid  to  the  successful,  the  principle  of  nationalism  has  been  turned 
against  the  less  fortunate.  Under  its  influence  attempts  are  con- 
stantly being  made  to  force  races  like  the  Irish,  the  Poles,  and 
the  Finns  into  unwilling  assimilation  with  nations  that  are 
politically  organised  and  superior  in  strength.  For  it  is  necessary 
to  distinguish  the  spirit  of  nationalism  from  that  of  particularism 
just  as  sharply  as  from  that  of  the  world  state  of  the  Middle 
Ages ;  it  does  not  look  with  favour  upon  local  peculiarities  and 
variations,  but  rather  stands  for  a  thoroughgoing  assimilation  of 
all  the  component  parts  of  the  nation. 

It  has  thus  come  about  that  the  successful  nations  have  de- 
veloped a  clearly  marked  individuality.  The  cosmopolitanism 
of  the  Middle  Ages  and  of  the  Renaissance,  the  dreams  of  world 
unity,  have  been  replaced  by  a  set  of  narrower  national  ideals 
concerning  customs,  laws,  literature,  and  art, — by  a  community 
of  independent  states,  each  striving  to  realise  to  the  fullest  its 
individual  aptitudes  and  characteristics.  It  is  not  necessary  to 
infer  from  this  a  universal  reign  of  chauvinism.  The  idea  of 
the  general  solidarity  of  mankind  is  still  strong  enough  to  restrain 
national  action  in  some  measure.  In  ordinary  times  there  is 
a  healthy  competition  between  the  members  of  the  international 
commonwealth, — a  competition  sharpened  by  the  knowledge  that 
temporary  weakness  may  mean  loss  of  national  existence.  Mean- 
while, international  law  holds  a  balance  between  the  states  by 


MISSIONS  AND  THE  NATIVE  CHURCHES       115 

preventing  any  of  the  stronger  members  from  unjustly  oppress- 
ing the  smaller  civilised  nations.  Under  these  conditions,  too 
great  uniformity  of  civilisation  is  avoided,  and  humanity  is  given 
an  opportunity  to  develop  its  varying  characteristics.  Thus  the 
ideal  of  the  period  is  as  far  removed  from  the  dead  uniformity 
of  a  world  empire  on  the  one  hand,  as  it  is  on  the  other  from 
the  distracting  anarchy  of  a  regime  of  mere  local  custom.  The 
world  community  idea  of  the  great  founders  of  international  law, 
Grotius  and  Suarez,  and  of  philosophers  of  eternal  peace,  like 
Saint-Pierre  and  Kant,  is  reconcilable  with  the  existence  of 
national  states,  if  it  is  understood  to  imply,  not  political  union, 
but  the  active  co-operation  of  all  nations  in  the  common  work 
of  mankind. — (Reinsch,  "  World  Politics,"  pp.  1-6.) 

This  has  been  the  political  spirit  of  the  West.  And  in  Asia, 
where  the  ideal  of  nationality  has  been  weak  partly  because 
of  the  racial  character  of  the  Asiatic  peoples,  partly  because  of 
their  religious  and  social  philosophy,  and  partly  because  their 
political  history  had  enfeebled  the  sense  of  national  identity, 
but  chiefly  because  absolutism  had  given  no  room  for  the  exer- 
cise of  the  political  reason,  we  have  witnessed  in  our  own  day 
a  development  of  national  consciousness  surpassing  anything  that 
we  have  seen  in  the  West.  First,  Japan  laid  aside  her  system 
of  Oriental  feudalism,  which  supplied  her  with  a  political  organi- 
sation but  which  did  not  produce  a  national  consciousness  or 
give  her  any  living  national  purpose.  By  a  wisely  guided  transi- 
tion, which  preserved  the  constructive  political  elements  of  the 
ancient  order,  Japan  passed  over  into  the  character  of  a  modern 
state,  with  a  definite  and  conscious  national  personality,  charged 
with  a  distinct  sense  of  national  rights  and  duties  and  a  definite 
national  mission.  With  Japan,  Siam  by  different  processes,  and 
with  different  consequences,  with  no  such  rupture  of  her  or- 
ganisation or  political  methods,  and  with  no  such  energy  of 
national  purpose,  but  with  placid  adaptation  as  characteristic 
of  her  history  as  Japan's  eager  absorption  of  the  new  idea  was 
in  keeping  with  Japan's  past,  took  on  the  character  of  a  Western 
national  state.  After  these,  and  with  heavy  labours,  which  are 
still  shaking  the  earth,  China  has  been  slowly  struggling  out 
of  her  old,  antique  notions  of  nationality,  very  real  but  impossible 


u6  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

in  a  real  world.  History  has  seen  nothing  greater  than  the 
birth  throes  of  China's  new  nationalism.  By  those  throes  one- 
fourth  of  the  human  race  are  coming  into  a  new  political  con- 
sciousness, and  with  it  will  claim  a  distinct  racial  destiny,  which 
we  may  well  pray  may  include  no  purpose  of  vengeance  in  the 
new  nation  for  its  antenatal  wrongs.  With  this  incomplete  but 
fast  developing  nationalism  in  China  we  are  witnessing  also  a 
struggle  whose  progress  is  more  involved  and  whose  issue  is 
more  uncertain  in  India  and  in  the  Mohammedan  lands  of 
western  Asia.  For  a  century  British  influence  in  India  has 
been  directed  to  one  end — to  unify  the  life  and  thought  of 
the  country,  and  to  school  it  to  justice  and  modern  political 
ideals.  The  best  representatives  of  Great  Britain  in  India  have 
always  declared  that  the  end  of  British  rule  would  be  an  Indian 
nationality.  "  In  the  background  of  every  Englishman's  mind," 
says  Mr.  Theodore  Morrison,  formerly  Principal  of  the  Moham- 
medan College  at  Aligarh,  in  "  Imperial  Rule  in  India,"  "  is 
probably  to  be  found  the  conviction  that  it  is  our  duty  to  so 
govern  India  that  she  may  one  day  be  able  to  govern  herself, 
and  as  an  autonomous  unit  take  her  place  in  the  great  confedera- 
tion of  the  British  Empire."  Macaulay,  when  legal  member  of 
the  Council  in  India,  contemplated  the  possibilities  of  a  yet  more 
distinct  nationality.  "  It  may  be,"  he  said,  "  that  the  public 
mind  of  India  may  expand  under  our  system  till  it  has  out- 
grown the  system ;  that  by  good  government  we  can  educate 
our  subjects  into  a  capacity  for  better  government;  that  having 
become  instructed  in  European  knowledge  they  may  in  some 
future  day  demand  European  institutions.  Whether  such  a  day 
will  ever  come  I  do  not  know.  But  never  will  I  attempt  to 
arrest  or  to  retard  it.  Whenever  it  does  come,  it  will  be  the 
proudest  day  in  English  history."  And  Sir  Herbert  Edwardes, 
one  of  the  great  men  of  the  early  days  in  India,  dreamed  of 
a  completely  free  nation.  "  England,"  said  he,  "  taught  by  both 
past  and  present,  should  set  before  her  the  noble  policy  of  first 
fitting  India  for  freedom,  and  then  setting  her  free.  ...  It 
may  take  years,  it  may  take  a  century  to  fit  India  for  self- 
government,  but   it  is  a  thing  worth   doing,  and  a  thing  that 


MISSIONS  AND  THE  NATIVE  CHURCHES        117 

may  be  done."  There  could  be  but  one  result  of  the  policy 
which  Great  Britain  has  pursued,  and  which  was  capable  of 
justifying  such  words  as  these.  Whether,  indeed,  India  can  be 
unified,  and  if  so,  by  what  power,  are  problems  which  religion 
and  not  politics  will  answer ;  but  surely,  as  the  Bishop  of  Lahore 
said  in  his  charge  of  1906  at  his  third  triennial  visitation,  when 
he  quoted  the  words  of  Macaulay  and  Edwardes,  "  would  it 
not  be  madness  to  come  with  our  English  ideals,  our  ideals  of 
personal  freedom  and  equality  of  opportunity,  of  local  self- 
government  established  or  aimed  at,  and  of  essential  justice  be- 
tween man  and  man,  to  seek  by  every  means  in  our  power  to 
infuse  them  into  the  life  and  thought  of  this  land,  and  then — 
then  to  expect  nothing  to  happen — to  expect  that  all  things  would 
continue  as  they  have  been  from  the  beginning," — to  preach 
in  the  hearing  of  the  people  the  ideal  of  a  free  and  united 
nationality  for  them  and  not  foresee  that  they  would  inevitably 
begin  to  discuss  and  desire  this  nationality  for  themselves? 
They  are  doing  so.  "  Important  classes  among  you,"  said  the 
King  in  his  message  to  the  people  of  India,  November  1,  1908, 
"  representing  ideas  which  have  been  fostered  and  encouraged 
by  British  rule,  claim  equality  of  citizenship  and  great  share 
in  legislation  and  government." 

And  even  in  Persia  and  Turkey,  where  Asiatic  absolutism 
has  lasted  longest  and  been  most  complete,  the  fountains  of  the 
deeps  have  been  broken  up.  Free  thought  has  uttered  itself  in 
free  speech  in  lands  where  the  denial  of  freedom  of  speech 
seemed  to  have  resulted  in  the  paralysis  of  men's  minds.  The 
demand  for  representative  institutions  and  constitutional  guar- 
antees in  these  countries  has  been  the  natural,  perhaps  in  Persia 
the  merely  conventional,  form  of  expression  of  the  inward  stir- 
ring of  the  national  spirit. 

The  national  resentment  of  Korea  at  the  domination  of  Japan 
is  due  to  her  dread  of  the  extinction  of  her  national  autonomy. 
The  new  order  is  vastly  superior  to  the  old,  and  the  men  who 
have  been  at  the  head  of  the  Japanese  administration  of  Korea 
have  been  of  the  highest  political  principle,  but  the  Koreans 
had  looked  forward  to  the  opportunity  to  develop  their  national 


n8  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

character  and  destiny  as  an  independent  political  personality, 
and  are  even  yet  unwilling  to  surrender  what  they  regard  as 
their  right  to  free  statehood. 

This  spirit  of  nationalism  is  inevitable  and  it  is  invaluable. 
It  is  not  in  conflict  with  the  ideal  of  a  united  humanity.  It 
is  essential  to  its  realisation.  The  same  God  Who  made  of  one 
blood  all  nations  of  men,  assigned  them  also  their  racial  and 
national  character  and  destinies  to  the  end  of  a  perfected  hu- 
manity. The  development  of  state  consciousness,  state  con- 
science, state  ambition,  state  duty,  is  a  development  in  the  will 
of  God  for  man,  and  the  true  world  citizenship  will  recognise 
this  and  build  the  unity  of  mankind,  not  upon  any  speculative 
theory  of  humanity,  nor  upon  any  sand-heap  of  individual  units, 
but  upon  corporate  nationalities  such  as  God  has  always  dealt 
with  and  built  upon  in  human  history.  He  used  a  nation  to 
prepare  the  salvation  of  the  world,  and  He  has  always  wrought 
His  purposes  through  racial  movements.  His  men  were  men 
of  their  nations,  and  His  judgments  were  judgments  of  nations 
of  men. 

The  problems  presented  by  a  world  made  up  of  conscious 
and  independent  nationalities,  with  distinct  missions  to  fulfil 
and  distinct  contributions  to  make  to  the  ultimate  perfected 
human  society,  are  complicated  and  difficult.  Each  nation  re- 
seiits  any  interference  with  its  autonomy  and  racial  aspirations. 
It  may  misconstrue  and  oppose  the  offer  of  those  services  which 
are  essential  to  the  fulfilment  of  its  destiny  as  Japan  did,  and 
as  China  has  done  for  a  hundred  years.  Good  and  evil,  loss 
and  gain,  truth  and  falsehood  are  mingled  in  all  relations  be- 
tween individuals  •  they  will  be  mingled,  also,  in  international 
relations.  One  nation  will  seek  in  the  fulfilment  of  its  ambitions 
the  extinction  of  another  nation.  One  of  the  two  great  problems 
of  our  day  is  the  problem  of  the  clear  discovery  by  each  nation 
of  its  true  mission  and  the  friendly  and  co-operative  adjustment 
of  this  mission  to  the  divinely  appointed  and  distinctive  mission 
of  each  other  nation.  The  problem  has  been  sadly  mishandled. 
The  nations  have  made  their  way  toward  light,  but  it  has  been 
through  tears  and  blood. 


MISSIONS  AND  THE  NATIVE  CHURCHES        119 

Now  this  problem  of  the  nations  is  the  inevitable  problem 
of  the  Churches  also.  For  the  aim  of  foreign  missions  is  to 
plant  Christianity  indigenously  in  the  life  of  each  nation,  to 
domesticate  it  there  and  let  it  grow  up  and  out  in  the  forms 
of  life  appropriate  to  it  in  the  new  environment  to  which  it  has 
been  naturalised,  to  which,  indeed,  it  has  not  needed  to  be 
naturalised  so  far  as  it  has  been  presented  in  its  true  character 
of  the  universal  life  and  faith  of  man.  So  far  as  we  succeed 
in  carrying  out  this  aim,  we  build  up  in  each  nation,  or  we  are 
witnesses  to  a  building  up  by  God  of  Churches  rooted  in  the 
life  of  each  separate  nation,  each  one  made  up  of  its  nation's 
people,  subject  to  its  distinctive  character  and  participating  in 
its  national  mission  and  destiny.  Our  very  fundamental  ideal 
in  foreign  missions  involves  the  creation  of  the  national  problem, 
the  problem  of  the  relation  of  national  Churches  or  of  Churches 
which  are  to  become  national. 

I  fear  that  it  may  be  necessary  somewhat  to  explain  and 
defend  this  ideal,  and  to  appeal  later  for  a  candid  acceptance 
of  all  that  it  involves.  It  certainly  is  the  ideal  of  missions  for 
which  we  must  contend.  The  Roman  Catholic  ideal  and  the 
ideal  of  some  Protestant  bodies  is  different.  There  are  Protestant 
missionary  organisations  whose  professed  aim  is  to  extend  over 
the  world  their  own  denominational  institution,  with  its  doc- 
trines, its  polity,  and  often  with  the  subjection  of  the  new 
Churches  which  may  be  established  to  the  chief  authorities  of 
the  Western  Church  whose  missionaries  established  them.  Such 
native  Churches,  instead  of  being  true  national  Churches,  a  com- 
ponent part  of  the  national  life,  and  entering  pervasively  and 
completely  into  its  mission,  are  only  local  branches  of  an  alien 
Church,  a  Chinese  or  Indian  section  of  an  American  or  Anglican 
or  German  organisation,  with  racial  traditions,  qualities,  and 
responsibilities  wholly  distinct  from  those  of  the  subject  branch. 
The  policy  of  the  Roman  Church  is,  of  course,  a  part  of  its 
character  and  traditional  principle.  Much  is  said  of  its  adapta- 
tion to  the  life  of  the  people  to  whom  it  goes.  Mr.  Kelly  draws 
a  true  picture  of  the  noble  devotion  and  conscientious  adaptation 
to  their  work  of  the  Roman  priests : 


120  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

Free  from  all  ties  of  the  world,  having  no  family  cares  to 
distract  their  attention,  they  are  at  perfect  liberty  to  follow  their 
vocation,  which  is,  like  the  Apostles,  to  be  all  things  to  all  men, 
in  order  to  gain  souls  to  Jesus  Christ.  As  the  Son  of  God 
came  on  earth  to  save  man,  so  the  missionaries  who  continue 
His  work,  set  aside  their  prejudices  and  conform  themselves, 
as  far  as  is  allowable,  to  the  manners  of  the  people  they  wish 
to  convert.  This  being  an  essential  condition  to  insure  success, 
the  missionaries  lead  the  life  and  wear  the  dress  of  the  Chinese, 
so  that  there  may  be  as  little  difference,  and  as  few  causes  of 
distrust  between  them  and  the  people  as  possible,  and  a  closeness 
of  intercourse  which  will  enable  them  to  smooth  away  many 
difficulties,  and  to  study  and  understand  the  good  and  bad  quali- 
ties of  the  soil  they  have  to  cultivate.  At  the  same  time  by  their 
sacred  calling  they  are  able  to  discern  the  virtues  and  the  vices 
of  individuals ;  they  come  in  contact  with  families,  and  in  this 
way  they  acquire  knowledge  of  many  a  detail  connected  with 
the  life  of  the  people.  The  Chinese  do  not  consider  them  as 
travellers  or  mere  birds  of  passage,  but  as  neighbors  who  speak 
the  same  language,  and  very  often  as  dear  friends  living  under 
the  same  roof.  In  one  word,  China  is  the  adopted  home  in  which 
the  Catholic  missionaries  live  and  die,  and  which  they  love  in 
spite  of  many  privations  and  hardships,  that  are  not  as  well 
known  as  the  dangers  of  ill-treatment  and  murder,  and  yet  are 
the  great  cause  of  the  mortality  that  so  rapidly  thins  the  ranks 
of  these  zealous  priests. — (Kelly,  "Another  China,"  p.  37  ff.) 

But  the  ideal  of  independent  nations,  each  working  out 
through  its  own  free  state  and  free  national  Church  its  own 
mission  and  contribution  to  the  perfected  humanity  which  God 
is  fashioning,  is  an  ideal  with  which  Rome  has  ever  been  at 
war.  The  Churches  which  she  founds  are  all  subject  Churches. 
On  the  foreign  mission  fields  she  imposes  a  devoted  and  adapted 
but  still  an  alien  clergy.  In  Brazil,  at  the  present  time,  she 
is  crowding  out  the  Brazilian  priests  and  dominating  the  whole 
Church  with  its  rich  endowments  by  foreign  orders.  In  the 
state  of  Santa  Catharina  there  are  only  three  Brazilian  priests 
left.  In  South  Africa,  we  are  told  in  the  Report  of  the  South 
African  Native  Races  Committee,  that  "  the  Trappists,  Jesuits, 
Marists,  and  other  Roman  Catholic  missionaries  keep  their  native 
converts  in  a  subordinate  position,  enforcing  a  strict  discipline 


MISSIONS  AND  THE  NATIVE  CHURCHES        121 

and  insisting  on  industrial  training.  '  I  noticed  in  the  church  of 
the  splendid  Trappist  mission  in  Natal,'  writes  Mr.  A.  Colquhoun, 
'  that  the  members  of  the  Order,  the  lay  brothers,  and  the  native 
congregation,  each  had  their  special  place  in  which  they  wor- 
shipped ' ;  and  he  points  out  that,  although  a  native  may  some- 
times become  a  lay  brother,  the  Roman  Catholic  bodies  '  admit 
no  natives  to  their  orders,  and  maintain  a  strictly  disciplinarian 
relation  with  all  their  converts,  never  admitting  them  to  an 
equality  in  matters  ecclesiastical.'  "  The  ideal  of  the  Roman 
Church  is  to  subject  all  Churches  everywhere  to  the  Roman 
tradition,  the  Roman  theory,  and  the  Roman  government. 

This  is  not  our  ideal.  Our  ideal  is  to  establish  in  each  land 
a  native  Church  that  shall  be  of  the  soil,  rooted  in  the  tradition 
and  life  of  the  people,  fitted  to  its  customs  and  institutions, 
sharing  its  character  and  participating  in  its  mission,  yes,  defining 
and  inspiring  that  mission  as  it  can  do  only  when  it  is  a  truly 
national  Church  subject  to  no  alien  bondage.  In  such  a  Church 
Christianity  will,  of  course,  surrender  nothing  that  is  essential 
and  universal.  She  enters  into  no  compromise.  She  simply 
domesticates  herself  in  a  new  home  which  she  has  been  long  in 
finding,  and  from  the  new  roots  which  she  sinks  into  humanity 
expands  that  interpretation  of  the  life  of  God  in  man  and 
nourishes  that  hope  of  man's  future  in  God,  which  can  only 
be  perfected  as  all  the  peoples  bring  their  glory  and  honour 
into  the  final  temple  of  humanity. 

In  this  view  our  ideal  is  not  to  project  our  Western  ecclesi- 
astical organisations  into  the  mission  fields,  but  to  carry  there 
the  Catholic  principles  of  the  Gospel,  let  them  take  root  and 
develop,  while  we  give  our  fostering  aid  to  their  growth  and 
such  guidance  to  the  institutional  forms  which  they  will  take 
as  we  are  able  to  give,  but  as  will  not  hinder  the  nationalisation 
of  our  religion,  which  will  show  its  divine  adaptation  and  power 
by  taking  a  Chinese  body  to  itself  in  China,  as  it  took  a  Scotch 
body  in  Scotland.  With  different  measures  of  completeness,  and 
yet  with  candid  acceptance  of  the  central  principle,  widely  dif- 
fering agencies  have  set  forth  this  view.  In  1886  the  Committee 
of  the  Church  Missionary  Society  adopted  a  statement  of  which 


122  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

one  article  was  the  following :  "  That  this  Society  deprecates 
any  measure  of  Church  organisation  which  may  tend  to  per- 
manently subject  the  native  Church  communities  in  India  to 
the  forms  and  arrangements  of  the  National  and  Established 
Church  of  a  far  distant  and  very  different  country,  and  there- 
fore desires  that  all  present  arrangements  for  Church  organisa- 
tion should  remain  as  elastic  as  possible  until  the  native  Chris- 
tians themselves  shall  be  numerous  and  powerful  enough  to  have 
a  dominant  voice  in  the  formation  of  an  ecclesiastical  constitu- 
tion on  lines  suitable  to  the  Indian  people, — a  constitution  which 
the  Society  trusts  will,  while  maintaining  full  communion  with 
the  Church  of  England,  be  such  as  to  promote  the  unity  of  In- 
dian Christendom."  In  like  manner,  the  General  Assembly  of 
the  Presbyterian  Church  in  the  United  States  of  America,  de- 
clared in  1890  its  approval  of  an  action  of  its  Board  of  Foreign 
Missions,  recommending  to  its  Missions  in  various  lands,  "  that 
they  encourage  as  far  as  practicable  the  formation  of  union 
churches,  in  which  the  results  of  the  mission  work  of  all  allied 
evangelical  churches  should  be  gathered,  and  that  they  observe 
everywhere  the  most  generous  principles  of  missionary  comity," 
and  adopting  a  statement  of  one  of  its  Committees,  as  follows: 

In  the  view  of  the  Board,  the  object  of  the  foreign  missionary 
enterprise  is  not  to  perpetuate  on  the  mission  field  the  denomi- 
national distinctions  of  Christendom,  but  to  build  up  on  Scrip- 
tural lines,  and  according  to  Scriptural  principles  and  methods, 
the  Kingdom  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  Where  Church  union 
cannot  be  attained,  the  Board  and  missions  will  seek  such 
divisions  of  territory  as  will  leave  as  large  districts  as  possible 
to  the  exclusive  care  and  development  of  separate  agencies.  It 
is  believed  that  in  other  regards,  also,  missionary  comity  should 
be  given  large  range:  (1)  Salaries  of  native  workers  should  be 
so  adjusted  among  missions  as  not  to  introduce  an  element  of 
dissatisfaction  among  the  workers  of  any  mission,  or  to  tempt 
them  away  from  the  mission  with  which  they  are  connected. 
(2)  Each  mission  and  the  churches  connected  therewith  should 
recognise  the  acts  of  discipline  of  other  missions  and  the  churches 
connected  with  them.  (3)  In  co-operative  educational  work, 
and  especially  where  the  schools  of  one  mission  train  helpers  for 


MISSIONS  AND  THE  NATIVE  CHURCHES       123 

other  missions,  the  latter  should  render  some  compensatory 
service.  (4)  Printing  establishments  are  in  many  missions  re- 
quired by  the  missionary  work.  Such  should  not  be  unnecessarily 
duplicated.  The  printing  establishment  of  one  mission  should,  if 
possible,  be  made  to  serve  the  needs  of  all  others  in  the  same 
territory.  (5)  A  hospital  invariably  opens  wide  opportunities 
for  evangelistic  work.  Until  these  are  properly  utilised,  it  is  not 
judicious  or  economical  to  establish  further  unutilised  spiritual 
opportunities.  (6)  Fellowship  and  union  among  native  Chris- 
tians of  whatever  name  should  be  encouraged  in  every  possible 
way,  with  a  view  to  that  unity  of  all  disciples  for  which 
our  Lord  prayed,  and  to  which  all  mission  effort  should 
contribute. 

From  the  beginning  the  free  Churches  have  had  leaders 
who  spoke  in  the  same  Catholic  mind.  And  at  the  conse- 
cration of  the  new  bishops  of  Bombay  and  Polynesia  on 
Ascension  Day,  1908,  Bishop  Gore  set  forth  the  oft-repeated 
warning  of  wise  missionary  leaders  against  the  confusion  of 
our  nationalism  with  that  Catholic  Christianity  which  will  find 
a  home  in  every  other  nationality.  "  There  is,"  said  he,  "  a 
very  specifically  Anglican  colour  about  our  home  religion,  which 
we  ought  to  have  no  desire  to  perpetuate  in  India.  An  English- 
man, wherever  he  goes,  is  apt  to  identify  his  religion  with  his 
memories  of  home.  We  ought  to  identify  our  religion  with  the 
Christ  of  all  nations.  What  we  desire  is  to  see  an  Indian  Church 
arise  with  an  Indian  episcopate  and  an  Indian  spirit." — (The 
Churchman,  June  27,  1908.) 

But  this  ideal  creates  in  missions  the  same  problems  which 
we  have  noted  in  the  political  life  of  our  time — the  problem 
of  relations  between  the  missions  as  representing  foreign 
Churches  on  one  side,  and  the  native  Churches  on  the  other. 
Those  Churches  which,  whether  by  theory  or  by  practice,  ob- 
scure any  distinction  between  the  two,  and  either  confuse  the 
missions  with  the  native  Churches  or  subordinate  the  native 
Churches  to  foreign  ecclesiastical  organisations,  do  not  escape 
the  problem.  They  lay  it  up  for  themselves  in  a  more  difficult 
and  aggravated  form,  unless  their  work  is  entirely  without  fruit. 
If  it  bears  fruit,  if  men  are  influenced  by  it,  then  inevitably 


124  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

the  question  of  the  relation  of  these  men  and  their  new  prin- 
ciples to  those  of  their  own  race  and  nation,  their  relations 
to  the  foreign  missionaries  who  brought  the  Gospel  to  them, 
and  to  the  Churches  and  nations  which  they  represent  and  can- 
not escape  from  representing,  will  arise,  and  it  is  in  the  highest 
degree  desirable  that  it  should  arise. 

It  is  an  inevitable  evil,  to  which  attention  has  already  been 
drawn,  that  Christianity  must  appear  in  the  mission  field  as 
a  foreign  religion,  connected  with  foreign  peoples  and  institutions 
in  a  way  that  arouses  the  suspicion  of  the  nationalistic  aspira- 
tions of  non-Christian  states.  The  first  converts  must  bear 
the  reproach  of  unpatriotic  and  disloyal  action.  They  will  be 
regarded  as  attaches  of  a  foreign  doctrine,  and  at  the  very 
outset  will  appear  without  the  character  of  a  native  institution, 
as  allies  of  barbaric  disturbers  of  the  national  ideals.  We  need 
to  remember  that,  after  all,  Christianity  met  this  same  problem 
at  the  outset  in  its  entrance  upon  the  Greek  world.  Aristides 
defends  "  the  Greek  nationality  against  the  Christian  and  philo- 
sophic cosmopolitanism." — (Harnack,  "  Expansion  of  Chris- 
tianity in  the  First  Three  Centuries,"  Vol.  II,  p.  129.)  "To 
him,"  says  Harnack,  "  Christians  are  despisers  of  Hellenism. 
How  a  man  like  Tatian  must  have  irritated  him !  Neumann  thus 
gives  the  charges  of  Aristides :  '  People  who  themselves  are 
simply  of  no  account  venture  to  slander  a  Demosthenes.  .  .  . 
They  have  severed  themselves  deliberately  from  the  Greeks,  or 
rather  from  all  that  is  good  in  the  world.  Incapable  of  co- 
operating for  any  useful  end  whatsoever,  they  yet  are  masters 
of  the  art  of  undermining  a  household  and  setting  its  members 
by  the  ears.  Not  a  word,  not  an  idea,  not  a  deed  of  theirs  has 
ever  borne  fruit.  They  take  no  part  in  organising  festivals, 
nor  do  they  pay  honour  to  the  gods.  They  occupy  no  seats  on 
civic  councils,  they  never  comfort  the  sad,  they  never  reconcile 
those  who  are  at  variance,  they  do  nothing  for  the  advancement 
of  the  young,  or  indeed  of  anybody.  They  take  no  thought  for 
style,  but  creep  into  a  corner  and  talk  stupidly.  They  are  ven- 
turing already  on  the  cream  of  Greece  and  calling  themselves 
'  Philosophers.'  "     Aristides  said  then  just  what  in  mission  fields 


MISSIONS  AND  THE  NATIVE  CHURCHES        125 

of  our  own  day  the  nationalistic  spirit  has  said  of  the  Christian 
Church.  To  the  extent  to  which  it  is  a  new  and  upheaving 
force,  the  Church  can  say  nothing;  it  can  only  proceed  to  do 
its  work  of  conversion  of  others  and  of  the  spirit  it  opposes. 
But  to  the  extent  that  the  charge  of  disloyalty  and  alienism  is 
true,  it  can  only  raise  with  itself  the  question  whether  it  is 
native  or  foreign,  whether  its  founders  ought  to  be  its  masters 
and  preside  over  its  destinies  as  well  as  its  origins. 

We  pass  over  the  personal  forms  in  which  the  problem  is  sure 
to  arise  from  the  ambitions  of  individual  leaders  both  native 
and  foreign,  whether  these  ambitions  are  founded  and  directed 
well  or  ill.  Apart  from  all  personalities,  the  question  springs 
from  the  very  nature  of  things.  The  Eastern  nations  are  coming 
to  a  new  national  consciousness.  Who  are  to  be  the  leaders  of 
the  new  day?  In  that  which  concerns  and  expresses  the  deeper 
life  of  these  peoples  are  Christian  men  to  take  a  leading  place 
or  not?  What  shall  be  the  relation  of  the  Christian  Church 
to  these  movements,  which,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  it  helped  to 
originate,  to  which  it  alone  can  give  the  right  principle  and  the 
truest  guidance?  Surely  if  Christianity  is  to  be  a  power  in 
the  lives  of  these  people,  it  must  enter  into  their  national  char- 
acter and  form  and  control  its  hopes  and  ambitions.  Well,  that 
is  the  last  thing  it  can  do  as  an  exotic,  an  alien  imposition,  an 
influence  organised  and  directed  from  without.  If  it  is  not  to 
be  this,  if  it  is  to  fulfil  its  destiny  as  the  directing  force  of 
national  character  and  purpose,  the  question  of  the  right  rela- 
tions of  mission  and  native  Church  must  be  raised,  and  raised 
from  the  outset. 

And  not  only  is  the  problem  inevitable.  It  is  in  the  highest 
degree  desirable.  Those  missions  are  to  be  congratulated  upon 
which  it  has  pressed  first  and  most  insistently.  It  is  a  hopeful 
sign  of  the  reality  of  the  work  done  in  Japan  and  China  that 
the  question  has  arisen  and  demanded  solution  there,  and  it  is 
the  most  discouraging  element  in  the  situation  in  India  that  after 
a  hundred  years  of  mission  work  in  that  land  the  ideal  of  so 
many  of  the  men  who  should  be  the  leaders  of  the  native  Church, 
engaged  in  rooting  Christianity  and  its  life  deep  in  the  soil  and 


126  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

native  institutions,  is  to  become  employees  of  foreign  missionary- 
organisations  on  the  basis  and  with  the  status  of  foreign  mis- 
sionaries. I  repeat  that  this  seems  to  me  one  of  the  saddest 
and  most  discouraging  features  of  missionary  work.  It  is  a 
symptom  of  the  same  disposition  of  which  Mr.  R.  I.  Paul  com- 
plains in  an  article  on  "  Indian  Christians  and  the  National 
Movement."  "  Does  it  not  behoove  us,"  says  this  Indian  Chris- 
tian, "  to  dispel  from  the  minds  of  our  non-Christian  brethren 
the  suspicions  that  we  count  ourselves  as  other  than  Indians? 
If  we  persist  in  keeping  aloof,  what  other  conclusion  is  possible? 
Nay,  more.  Are  we  not  giving  ground  to  the  deplorable  idea 
that  Christianity  is  videshi  ?  As  Dr.  Ghose  has  well  said,  '  Are 
we  not  working,  praying,  and  waiting  for  the  glorious  day 
when  our  Hind  becomes  a  Christian  country  ? '  Deeply  have 
we  realised  that  Christianity  has  come  not  only  to  stay  in  India, 
but  also  to  conquer  it;  and  that  this  will  take  place  whether 
a  Christian  nation  rules  us  or  not — so  firm  is  our  idea  that 
Christianity  is  becoming  more  and  more  every  day  a  Swadeshi 
religion.  But  can  any  thinking  non-Christian  in  India  be  got 
to  think  so?  If  not,  the  fault  lies  with  our  aloofness." — (The 
Young  Men  of  India,  January,  1909.)  It  is  high  time  that 
the  question  raised  long  ago  in  Japan  should  be  raised  in  India, 
not  the  petty  and  fallacious  question  of  how  to  control  the  ex- 
penditure of  mission  funds,  but  the  deep  and  vital  question  of 
how  to  build  up  a  true  native  Church  which  shall  be  able  to  lay 
hold  upon  the  living  movements  of  the  nation  and  give  them 
genius  and  guidance.  And  this  question,  as  a  matter  of  prac- 
tical missionary  administration,  is  a  question  of  ecclesiastical 
national  relations.  It  is  the  problem  of  nationalism  expressed  in 
terms  of  mission  and  native  Church. 

And  the  point  to  which  we  address  ourselves  is  this :  Can- 
not the  problem  which  in  politics  has  not  been  solved,  but  only 
slowly  worked  out  in  tears  and  blood,  be  so  dealt  with  in  re- 
ligion as  to  bind  men  together  from  the  outset  in  the  harmonious 
fulfilment  of  diverse  functions,  and  the  development  of  that 
ecclesiastical  nationalism  which  is  to  give  spiritual  meaning  and 
direction  to  all  others?    We  must  believe  that  it  can. 


MISSIONS  AND  THE  NATIVE  CHURCHES       127 

To  this  end  it  is  necessary  to  recognise  that  it  is  a  problem 
which  we  confront,  and  to  define  to  ourselves  the  nature  of  this 
problem.  First  of  all,  it  is  a  problem  in  right  ideals  and  right 
education  from  the  outset.  The  mission  movement  must  see 
what  the  end  is  that  it  is  seeking,  and  must  keep  this  clearly 
before  itself,  no  matter  how  long  delayed  its  realisation  may 
be,  and  it  must  set  it  before  the  native  Church  from  the  be- 
ginning, so  that  no  false  education  shall  leave  behind  it  results 
from  which  the  future  generations  can  only  extricate  themselves 
with  suffering.  In  the  second  place,  it  is  a  problem  in  gradual 
transition.  It  is  this  which  constitutes  one  great  element  of 
difficulty.  At  first  there  is  no  native  Church.  When  it  begins, 
it  may  begin  in  the  conversion  of  some  one  poor  individual,  it 
may  be  a  personal  servant.  The  growth  may  be  slow.  Long 
before  the  time  of  maturity  will  have  come  the  mission  will 
have  had  to  anticipate  it  and  to  lay  the  foundation  of  institutions 
essential  to  the  life  and  power  of  the  native  Church,  which  will 
in  due  time  become  the  business  of  the  Church.  As  the  Church 
approaches  maturity,  there  will  still  remain  duties  which  the 
mission  is  to  aid  it  in  discharging.  If  the  mission  and  the  native 
Church  started  on  equal  footing  and  qualified  at  the  outset  to 
arrange  their  relations,  the  whole  question  would  be  different ;  but 
the  problem  is  one  of  a  long  and  complicated  transition  in  which 
the  slowess  of  the  process  easily  obscures  the  essential  principles 
and  the  ultimate  issues.  In  the  third  place,  as  has  just  been 
suggested,  it  is  a  problem  in  relations.  The  mission  is  a  foreign 
mission.  Its  work  may  be  long  continued,  but  it  can  only  be 
permanent  where  it  is  a  failure.  The  greater  the  success,  the 
more  temporary  its  character.  Its  end  is  to  create  something 
else  to  which  it  is  to  give  place.  The  problem  is  one  of  right 
relationship  to  the  fulfilment  of  this  end.  It  is  on  this  very 
account,  also,  a  problem  in  distinctions.  The  native  Church  is 
to  be  independent.  Unless  that  independence  is  to  be  secured 
by  crisis  and  revolution,  it  must  be  prepared  for  by  wise  recogni- 
tion of  free  and  separate  rights  from  the  outset,  and  by  the 
cordial  development  of  liberty.  Henry  Venn's  schemes  for  the 
definition  of  distinct  duties  and  rights  on  the  part  of  native  con- 


128  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

gregations  have  been  thoughtfully  criticised  by  a  modern  student 
of  missions  on  the  ground  that  by  his  system  "  the  difference 
between  the  work  and  aims  of  the  missionary  society  and  those 
of  the  Church  it  has  brought  into  being  is  unnecessarily  accen- 
tuated."—  (Richter,  "  History  of  Indian  Missions,"  p.  431.)  It 
may  be,  but  there  is  a  difference  and  it  needs  to  be  discerned 
and  firmly  accentuated.  If  no  such  difference  is  observed  in 
the  long  preparatory  years,  it  will  be  difficult  to  secure  its  recog- 
nition afterwards.  Missions  will  have  to  go  on  doing  work  which 
a  native  Church  should  long  before  have  been  raised  up  to  do, 
as  is  the  case  in  India,  and  the  native  Church  will  be  an  exotic 
or  a  parasite  when  it  ought  to  be  a  native  and  indigenous  power, 
pervading  and  moulding  the  life  of  the  nation.  And  lastly,  the 
problem  is  a  problem  also  in  faith  and  love.  It  is  a  problem  in 
faith  and  trust.  Men  take  on  the  character  with  which  you 
credit  them.  They  become  what  you  trust  that  they  are.  Move- 
ments and  institutions,  also.  They  learn  as  men  learn,  by  effort 
and  experiment,  by  the  actual  attempt  to  discharge  responsibility, 
by  failure  oft-repeated  and  by  mistakes.  We  must  not  think 
that  we  can  carry  on  mission  work  in  disregard  of  all  the  prin- 
ciples of  human  nature  and  true  education.  Responsibilities 
must  be  laid  on  the  native  Churches  from  the  beginning,  and 
they  must  be  expected  and  trusted  to  do  many  things,  which 
they  may  not  do  or  may  not  do  nearly  as  well  as  they  would 
be  done  by  a  well-organised  foreign  mission.  Diverse  judgments 
are  presented  to  us  on  this  issue  by  men  who,  if  they  faced 
practical  issues  together,  might  not  after  all  be  very  far  apart. 
On  the  one  hand,  Dr.  Warneck  wrote  to  the  students  at  the 
Liverpool  Conference  in  1908,  expressing  his  misgivings  as  to 
the  consequences  of  free  action  and  undirected  growth  on  the 
part  of  the  new  Churches  of  the  East.  He  pointed  out  two 
dangers,  as  he  saw  them: 

The  first  is  the  danger  of  a  religious  eclecticism,  which  has 
already  attained  formidable  proportions  in  Japan,  and  which  will, 
I  fear,  before  long,  start  propaganda  in  China  and  India,  and 
turn  many  heads.  It  is  by  no  means  confined  to  frankly  non- 
Christian  circles,  which  speak  quite  openly  of  a  development  of 


MISSIONS  AND  THE  NATIVE  CHURCHES       129 

Christianity  by  the  incorporation  of  Buddhist  and  Confucianist 
doctrines,  but  also  Japanese  native  Christians,  including  con- 
spicuous preachers,  who  are  questioning  the  finality  of  Chris- 
tianity, and  are  leaving  it  an  open  question  what  and  how  much 
can  be  taken  over  from  other  religions  in  order  to  complete  the 
Christian  faith.  I  cannot  stop  to  prove  this,  in  this  short  message 
of  greeting,  but  if  you  study  the  accurate  reports  which  are  not 
idealistic,  which  come  from  Japan,  you  will  find  sufficient  proof 
of  what  I  say.  It  is  not  the  first  time  that  a  young  native  Church 
has  found  itself  face  to  face  with  eclectic  dangers  of  this  sort. 
As  you  know  from  your  Church  history,  such  dangers  existed 
in  the  early  Christian  centuries.  In  the  Far  East,  we  stand 
now  only  on  the  threshold  of  these  dangers ;  but  do  not  close 
your  eyes  to  them  and,  in  so  far  as  you  may  be  called  to  take 
a  part  in  the  Christianising  of  those  lands,  spare  no  effort  that 
the  old  apostolic  Gospel  is  not  mingled  with  heathen  elements. 

The  other  danger  is  that  of  a  premature  complete  independ- 
ence of  the  young  native  churches  from  the  parent  Christendom. 
Of  course,  it  is  the  objective  of  all  missionary  agencies  to  raise 
up  self-supporting,  self-governing,  and  self -extending  native 
Churches,  and  our  whole  missionary  aim  is,  at  present,  directed 
towards  educating  them  to  independence  of  this  kind.  But  a 
healthy  education  avoids  sudden  leaps.  We  must  first  have 
Christians  who  are  mature,  well  grounded  in  Christian  doctrine, 
stable  in  morals,  capable  of  an  independent  judgment  in  spiritual 
matters,  rich  in  Christian  experience,  before  we  can  constitute 
completely  independent  native  Churches.  Without  that  guaran- 
tee, there  is,  as  experience  everywhere  shows,  the  danger  of  a 
religious  and  moral  declension.  If  a  doctrine,  right  enough  in 
itself,  lacks  practical  pedagogic  wisdom  in  its  actual  application 
to  life,  it  becomes  a  dangerous  theorising. 

On  the  other  hand,  Mr.  Meredith  Townsend  proposes  the 
heroic  course  of  abandonment  of  the  native  Churches  to  their 
own  development. 

Let  every  native  Church  once  founded  be  left  to  itself  or  be 
helped  only  by  letters  of  advice,  as  the  Churches  of  Asia  were, 
to  seek  for  itself  the  rule  of  life  which  best  suits  Christianity 
in  India,  to  press  that  part  of  Christianity  most  welcome  to  the 
people,  to  urge  those  dogmatic  truths  which  most  attract  and 
hold  them.  We  in  England  have  almost  forgotten  those  dis- 
cussions on  the  nature  of  God  which  divided  the  Eastern  Empire 
of  Rome,  and  which  among  Christian  Indians  would  probably 


130  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

revive  in  their  fullest  force.  It  is  the  very  test  of  Christianity 
that  it  can  adapt  itself  to  all  civilisations  and  improve  all,  and 
the  true  native  Churches  of  India  will  no  more  be  like  the 
Reformed  Churches  of  Europe  than  the  Churches  of  Yorkshire 
are  like  the  Churches  of  Asia  Minor.  Strange  beliefs,  strange 
organisations,  many  of  them  spiritual  despotisms  of  a  lofty  type, 
like  that  of  Keshub  Chunder  Sen,  the  most  original  of  all  modern 
Indians,  wild  aberrations  from  the  truth,  it  may  be  even  mon- 
strous heresies,  will  appear  among  them,  but  there  will  be  life, 
conflict,  energy,  and  the  faith  will  spread,  not  as  it  does  now 
like  a  fire  in  a  middle-class  stove,  but  like  a  fire  in  the  forest. 
There  is  far  too  much  fear  of  imperfect  Christianity  in  the  whole 
missionary  organisation.  Christianity  is  always  imperfect  in  its 
beginnings.  The  majority  of  Christians  in  Constantine's  time 
would  have  seemed  to  modern  missionaries  mere  worldlings ;  the 
converted  Saxons  were  for  centuries  violent  brutes ;  and  the 
mass  of  Christians  throughout  the  world  are  even  now  no  better 
than  indifferents.  None  the  less  is  it  true  that  the  race  which 
embraces  Christianity,  even  nominally,  rises  with  a  bound  out 
of  its  former  position,  and  contains  in  itself  thenceforward  the 
seed  of  a  nobler  and  more  lasting  life. 

Mr.  Townsend's  proposal  may  be  regarded  by  some  as  only 
theoretical  as  yet,  since  no  Asiatic  people  can  be  said  to  have 
embraced  Christianity  as  a  race,  and  some  might  argue  that 
no  native  Church  has  yet  been  adequately  founded  in  Asia. 
But  the  Rev.  F.  B.  Meyer  some  years  ago  was  prepared  to  go 
the  full  length  of  Mr.  Townsend's  proposition  without  further 
delay.  In  an  interview  dictated  and  corrected  for  an  American 
paper,  he  said : 

It  might  be  the  very  best  thing  for  China,  and  India  as  well, 
if  all  the  American  and  European  missionaries  would  have  to 
clear  out.  I  have  had  no  personal  experience  or  observation  in 
China,  but  I  have  in  India.  The  one  thing  lacking  in  the  life 
of  the  Indian  Christians  is  independence.  They  lean  on  the 
foreign  missionaries.  If  the  missionaries  went  two  things  would 
happen : 

i.  The  "  rice  Christians  "  would  drop  off. 

2.  Those  on  whom  real  growth  must  depend  would  be  com- 
pelled to  take  a  determined  stand,  and  through  them  the  Holy 
Ghost  would  probably  produce  a  native  Christian  Church  that 


MISSIONS  AND  THE  NATIVE  CHURCHES        131 

would  prove  the  one  organisation  for  the  evangelisation  of  India. 
I  doubt  if  India  can  be  evangelised  by  present  methods.  Both 
American  (to  an  extent)  and  English  missionaries  stand  as  the 
representatives  of  a  conquering  race,  to  whom  the  weak  cringe 
or  depend  for  support,  and  from  whom  the  self-reliant  stand 
aloof. 

As  in  the  case  of  Madagascar  the  awful  persecution  in  the 
sixties  proved  the  means  of  developing  a  strong  Madagascar 
Church,  so  persecutions  in  China  incident  to  the  present  up- 
heaval may  well  prove  under  God  the  development  of  a  strong 
Chinese  Church.  In  China  the  Gospel  is  not  now  indigenous. 
I  think  the  time  is  ready  for  withdrawal  of  the  foreigners.  The 
early  Christian  Church  had  not  as  long  a  time  of  probation  before 
its  leaders  were  given  up  to  martyrdom,  and  yet  the  Church 
stood.  It  will  stand  in  China,  the  more  so  that  the  Chinese  have 
the  Scriptures.  For  that  matter,  my  judgment  is  that  the  prin- 
ciple holds  more  in  China  than  in  India,  and  from  my  own 
knowledge  I  am  convinced  that  the  American  and  European 
missionaries  will  have  to  leave  India  before  the  work  there 
becomes  truly  successful.  The  Chinese  character  is  of  stronger 
stuff  than  the  Indian.  The  Chinese  make  superb  preachers, 
and  are  excellent  evangelists.  Of  course  the  Europeans  and 
Americans  would  leave  the  property  there  for  native  use.  In 
this  whole  matter  I  am  only  trying  to  interpret  what  I  think 
to  be  the  course  of  God's  providence.  Christendom  has  never 
had  a  chance  to  know  the  splendid  stuff  of  which  native  Chris- 
tians in  China  are  made.  Withdraw  the  foreign  Christian  work- 
ers and  I  believe  we  shall  soon  force  the  Church  in  both  countries 
to  become  indigenous  and  independent,  and  see  it  prosper  as 
it  can  never  prosper  under  present  conditions. — (The  Church 
Economist,  Sept.,  1900.) 

This  is  a  measure  of  confidence  in  the  ability  of  the  native 
Church  to  evangelise  the  world  which  neither  those  Churches 
nor  the  foreign  missions  are  able  as  yet  to  feel,  although  the 
day  for  it  will  surely  come,  and  when  it  does  come  the  transition 
will  be  made  not  because  of  the  failure  of  the  missions,  but 
because  of  their  success,  a  success  prepared  for  by  generous 
confidence  in  the  native  Churches,  and  by  trust  in  the  Spirit  of 
God,  Who  is  leading  them  as  truly  as  He  is  leading  the  Churches 
of  the  West.  For  the  problem  with  which  we  are  dealing  is, 
as  I  have  said,  a  problem  of  trust.     If  we  do  not  trust  the 


132  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

native  Churches  and  trust  them  with  responsibility,  we  shall 
only  raise  up  anaemic  imitations  of  Western  models,  which  will 
be  impotent  to  play  their  part  in  the  national  destinies  which 
they  ought  to  be  moulding  and  inspiring.  I  am  content  to  state 
the  convictions  set  forth  in  these  lectures  in  the  words  of  a 
great  Indian  missionary,  Robert  Clark  of  the  Punjab,  in  which 
he  speaks  of  the  natural  leaders  of  the  native  Church :  "  It 
would  seem  to  follow,  then,  that  we  must  make  them  the  actors 
in  missionary  work,  and  must  not  let  them  be  merely  the  per- 
sons who  are  always  acted  on.  We  must  throw  responsibility 
on  them,  and  throw  on  them  difficulties,  too,  as  they  occur;  and, 
placing  them  in  the  arena,  in  the  sight  of  God  and  man,  we 
must  let  them  act,  and  see  how  they  will  act,  and  encourage 
them  to  act  well,  and  of  themselves.  Have  we  not,  we  may 
ask,  made  duties,  and  especially  mission  duties,  too  easy  for 
native  Christians ;  so  that  they  are  still,  even  now,  many  of 
them,  mere  babes,  without  self-reliance,  or  ability  to  originate 
or  carry  out  measures  by  themselves ;  so  that,  without  any  will 
or  wish  of  their  own,  they  are  like  the  pieces  at  a  game  of  chess, 
put  forward  by  the  player,  and,  when  left  to  themselves,  remain 
everlastingly  in  the  same  position  in  which  they  were  placed? 
It  would  seem  that  they  must  begin  to  act  for  themselves;  to 
preach  for  themselves ;  to  conduct  schools  for  themselves ;  to 
go  out  on  itinerations  for  themselves ;  to  publish  books  for  them- 
selves ;  to  raise  subscriptions  for  themselves ;  to  live  by  them- 
selves; leaning  on  no  arm  but  their  own  and  God's." — (Clark, 
"  Robert  Clark  of  the  Punjab,"  p.  251.) 

Such  an  attitude  of  confidence  is  possible  only  to  great  love. 
It  is  the  love  of  parents  in  the  home  which  makes  them  too 
wise  to  do  for  their  children  what  they  should  do  for  them- 
selves. The  metaphors  of  paternalism  are  not  good  in  mission 
work,  but  yet  in  a  true  sense  the  native  Churches  are  the  children 
of  the  older  Christian  Churches.  Those  older  Churches  show 
the  greater  love  to  the  newer  who  trust  them  truly.  And  in 
a  closer  sense  the  problem  is  a  problem  of  love  as  well  as  of 
confidence.  We  are  dealing  with  men  and  women  of  the  same 
spirit  as  ourselves,  with  the  same  feelings  and  rights.    The  whole 


MISSIONS  AND  THE  NATIVE  CHURCHES        133 

course  and  issue  of  difficult  and  complicated  questions  of  in- 
stitutional relations  and  adjustments  may  depend  upon  personal 
courtesy  and  affection.  Dr.  Warneck  rightly  states  that  "  we 
must  first  have  Christians  who  are  mature,  well-grounded  in 
Christian  doctrine,  stable  in  morals,  capable  of  an  independent 
judgment  in  spiritual  matters,  rich  in  Christian  experience,  be- 
fore we  can  constitute  completely  independent  native  Churches." 
There  are  many  such  Christians,  and  the  solution  of  the  problem 
with  which  we  are  dealing  will  hinge  upon  our  confidence  in 
them  as  men  entitled  to  be  trusted  wholly,  and  upon  our  affection 
for  them  as  personal  friends. 

I  believe  that  this  is  the  general  way  in  which  we  should 
view  the  problem.  It  remains  to  consider  it  in  its  practical 
detail.  The  administrative  ideal  of  foreign  missions  is  the  es- 
tablishment of  independent  national  Churches.  The  familiar 
adjectives  describing  the  practical  characteristics  which,  in  their 
relation  to  missions,  it  is  sought  to  develop  in  these  Churches 
are  self -propagating,  self-supporting,  self-governing. 

The  primary  essential  of  Christianity  is  self-extension.  It 
is  the  sign  of  life.  The  Church  is  here  to  make  disciples  of 
all  the  nations.  To  that  end,  as  Dr.  A.  J.  Gordon  was  accus- 
tomed to  say,  "  every  disciple  must  be  a  discipler."  The  first 
Christian  must  go  out  at  once  to  tell  his  story  and  to  win  others. 
From  the  very  beginning  the  Church  must  be  an  evangelistic 
agency.  The  early  Church  was  such  a  living,  self-propagating 
power.  The  work  was  not  done  by  a  few  select  missionaries. 
The  very  life  of  the  Church  was  a  propaganda.  Harnack  de- 
scribes its  character  and  its  method : 

The  most  numerous  and  successful  missionaries  of  the 
Christian  religion  were  not  the  regular  teachers  but  Christians 
themselves,  by  dint  of  their  loyalty  and  courage.  How  little  we 
hear  of  the  former  and  their  results,  how  much  of  the  effects 
produced  by  the  latter ! 

If  this  dominated  all  their  life,  and  if  they  lived  according  to 
the  precepts  of  their  religion,  they  could  not  be  hidden  at  all ; 
by  their  very  mode  of  living  they  could  not  fail  to  preach  their 
faith  plainly  and  audibly.  Then  there  was  the  conviction  that 
the  day  of  judgment  was  at  hand,  and  that  they  were  debtors 


134  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

to  the  heathen.  Furthermore,  so  far  from  narrowing  Chris- 
tianity, the  exclusiveness  of  the  Gospel  was  a  powerful  aid  in 
promoting  its  mission,  owing  to  the  sharp  dilemma  which  it 
involved. 

We  cannot  hesitate  to  believe  that  the  great  mission  of 
Christianity  was  in  reality  accomplished  by  means  of  informal 
missionaries.  Justin  says  so  explicitly. —  (Harnack,  "The  Ex- 
pansion of  Christianity  in  the  First  Three  Centuries,"  Vol.  I, 
pp.  458-460.) 

This  character  must  be  given  to  the  native  Church  on  the 
foreign  mission  field  from  the  first  hour  of  its  existence.  Before 
there  is  a  church  organisation,  before  there  is  a  baptised  be- 
liever, the  principle  of  propagandism  must  be  planted  in  the 
first  enquirers.  They  must  be  taught  that  the  duty  of  spreading 
Christianity  by  life  and  word  is  the  duty  of  every  Christian. 
It  is  not  the  duty  of  official  preachers  only,  far  less  of  those 
alone  who  are  supported  by  such  work.  Wrong  conceptions  on 
these  points  can  easily  be  given  at  the  outset,  and  their  fatal 
effects  will  be  felt  for  generations.  There  are  native  Churches 
which  are  not  only  ineffective  as  forces  of  propaganda,  but 
positively  obstructive.  And  their  character  is  due  in  part  to  a 
wrong  education  at  the  outset.  The  duty  of  making  Christ  known 
must  be  impressed  upon  the  Church  by  impressing  it  upon  each 
believer  at  the  very  beginning.  That  has  been  done  in  Uganda 
and  Korea,  and  in  two  ways.  First,  the  enquirer  in  Korea  was 
asked  whether  he  had  told  any  one  else  of  the  Gospel,  and  was 
not  received  until  he  could  bring  some  one  else.  The  new  Chris- 
tians tasted  the  joy  and  learned  the  duty  of  evangelism  at  the 
start.  Secondly,  the  missionaries  set  before  the  Church  the 
right  example.  It  would  have  imitated  the  contrary  example 
of  torpor,  stagnant  home-keeping,  general  conversation  on  civili- 
sation, routine  secularism,  and  occasional  religious  activity  on 
set  occasion  if  that  example  had  been  offered.  A  heavy  re- 
sponsibiliy  rests  on  the  founders  of  native  Churches  in  this 
matter.  "  There  are  some  missionaries,"  writes  an  experienced 
and  untiring  worker  in  China,  "  who  are  doing  aggressive  evan- 
gelistic work  and  thus  setting  an  example  to  the  Chinese  Church, 
but  too  many  allow  themselves  to  be  occupied  simply  with  the 


MISSIONS  AND  THE  NATIVE  CHURCHES       135 

care  of  stations  that  they  have  fallen  heir  to,  or  that  have 
come  to  them  in  some  way  without  much  effort  on  their  part, 
so  that  all  the  growth  is  simply  addition  from  the  family  con- 
nections in  the  old  Christian  stations  that  have  probably  existed 
for  twenty  or  thirty  years.  This  fact,  with  its  bearings,  is  one 
of  the  most  serious  in  the  mission  enterprise.  Missionaries  ought 
to  be  an  example  to  the  Chinese  Church  in  the  matter  of  con- 
secrated enterprise." — (The  Chinese  Recorder,  October,  1908, 
Art.  "  Evangelism  in  Relation  to  the  Growth  of  the  Chinese 
Church."  See  also  speech  by  Bishop  Tucker  on  "  Self-exten- 
sion, Self-support,  and  Self-government  in  Missionary  Churches," 
at  the  Anglican  Church  Congress,  Brighton,  1901.)  The  self- 
propagating  zeal  of  native  Churches  is  the  measure  of  missionary 
fidelity  in  this  regard,  and  a  noble  and  convincing  testimony 
it  provides,  but  the  foreign  missions  of  the  Western  Churches 
have  not  always  discerned  that  the  great  duty  of  evangelisation 
must  rest  upon  the  native  Churches,  and  that  the  duty  must  be 
taught  the  native  Churches  by  beginning  to  teach  it  by  method 
and  policy  and  example  before  ever  the  native  Churches  exist. 
And  if  one  characteristic  of  the  native  Church  is  to  be  exalted 
above  another,  it  is  this  one.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  is  it  not  the  one 
least  talked  about,  least  exalted?  But  of  what  use  is  a  self- 
supporting  and  self-governing  Church  which  is  spiritually  dead? 
The  very  purpose  of  the  Church  is  to  carry  the  Gospel  to  every 
creature  and  to  form  the  national  character  and  inspire  the 
national  purpose.  The  missionary  enterprise  fails  in  its  central 
mission  if  it  does  not  establish  Churches  whose  life  is  dominated 
by  the  spirit  of  national  propagandism  and  world  evangelisation. 
This  is  the  first  thing. 

The  second  is  self-support.  It  is  more  important  than  self- 
government,  as  a  man's  duties  are  more  important  than  his 
rights.  From  the  very  beginning,  the  ideal  of  self-support,  just 
as  the  ideal  of  self-propagation,  must  be  imbedded  in  the  ger- 
minating and  growing  native  Church.  The  first  preaching  must, 
of  course,  be  by  the  missionaries,  but  just  as  soon  as  possible 
the  native  Church  itself  must  be  set  to  doing  the  preaching  and 
meeting  the  expense  of  it.     Where  the  work  meets  with  speedy 


136  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

success  it  may  be  possible  to  make  the  work  of  the  Church 
self-supporting  from  the  outset.  This  has  been  the  case  in 
Uganda.  Bishop  Tucker  set  forth  the  remarkable  record  of  the 
Uganda  Church  at  the  Brighton  Church  Congress  in  1901 : 

I  have  already  spoken  of  the  2,000  native  evangelists  at  work 
in  the  country.  These  are  all  maintained  by  the  native  Church. 
The  same  is  true  of  the  2j  native  clergy.  Nor  is 
this  all.  The  churches  and  schools  of  the  country — some  700  in 
number — are  built,  repaired,  and  maintained  by  the  natives  them- 
selves. In  one  word,  the  whole  work  of  the  native  Church — its 
educational,  pastoral,  and  missionary  work — is  maintained  en- 
tirely from  native  sources.  Not  one  single  halfpenny  of  English 
money  is  employed  in  its  maintenance. 

What  is  the  secret  of  the  attainment  of  this  most  desirable 
state  of  things?  Two  things  from  the  very  beginning  have  been 
kept  steadily  in  view.  First,  the  necessity  of  bringing  home  to 
the  minds  of  the  converts  a  sense  not  merely  of  the  duty  and 
responsibility,  but  also  of  the  privilege,  of  giving  to  the  support 
of  their  own  Church;  and  secondly  (and  this  is  vitally  im- 
portant), the  setting  one's  face  "  like  a  flint  "  against  the  employ- 
ment by  the  missionaries  of  European  funds  in  the  work  of  the 
native  Church. 

It  is  so  easy  to  appeal  to  wealthy  and  generous  friends  at  home 
for  £10  or  £15  for  the  support  of  a  Bible- woman  or  a  native 
evangelist,  and  so  difficult  to  continue  in  the  work  of  inculcating 
by  slow  degrees  the  responsibility  and  privilege  of  giving.  But 
here  again,  as  in  the  case  of  self-extension,  self-denial  must  come 
in,  and  the  temptation  to  appeal  to  loving  friends  at  home  must 
be  resisted  at  all  costs. 

We  are  hearing  continually  of  the  deficits  of  missionary 
societies ;  and  no  wonder,  when  their  funds  are  so  largely  em- 
ployed in  the  maintenance  of  native  Churches.  Numbers  of 
native  Christians  are  being  deprived  of  the  inestimable  privilege 
of  supporting  their  own  Church  by  the  mistaken  kindness  of 
missionaries  and  missionary  societies.  Such  missionaries  and 
such  societies  are,  in  my  opinion,  inflicting  a  cruel  wrong  on 
those  native  Churches  whose  burdens  they  seek  to  bear.  They 
are  depriving  them  of  one  of  the  surest  means  of  growth  and 
development  to  maturity  of  life  and  action. 

But  it  is  not  everywhere  that  so  many  Christians  come  into 
the  Church.     There  are  fields  where  the  work  has  been  carried 


MISSIONS  AND  THE  NATIVE  CHURCHES        137 

on  for  years  with  small  direct  result,  where  the  missions  are 
supporting  great  and  expensive  schools  and  maintaining  many 
evangelists,  and  where  they  have  organised  churches  with  pastors 
whom  the  people  are  not  able,  or  do  not  think  that  they  are 
able,  to  support,  and  whose  salaries  are  paid  from  mission 
funds  while  they  preach  in  church  buildings  erected  and  main- 
tained by  mission  funds  and  in  mission  compounds.  There  are 
other  fields  where  the  work  has  been  fruitful,  but  where  the 
advance  propagation  is  in  the  hands  of  the  missions,  which 
employ  evangelists  and  helpers  who  itinerate  or  locate  over  con- 
gregations which  become  soon  self-supporting  churches.  Many 
practical  questions  arise  under  these  conditions  on  which  de- 
voted and  capable  missionaries  are  of  different  opinions.  Should 
foreign  money  be  used  for  the  employment  of  native  agents? 
If  so,  on  what  scale  and  with  what  limitations?  Should  pastors 
be  given  to  churches  unable  to  support  them  in  whole  or  in 
part?  If  not,  with  what  provision  for  entire  self-support  at 
the  proper  time?  Should  men  be  employed  whom  the  native 
Church,  if  it  were  in  charge,  would  not  employ,  or  for  salaries 
which  the  native  Church  would  not  pay,  or  for  work  which 
it  would  not  do?  Should  church  buildings  be  erected  for  the 
people?  These  are  but  a  few  of  many  questions  which  con- 
stitute the  missionary's  daily  problem.  Back  of  them  all,  how- 
ever, we  may  press  to  two  fundamental  principles  which  may 
be  difficult  of  application,  but  which  are  not  likely  to  be  applied 
at  all  unless  we  see  them  and  resolve  to  adhere  to  them.  The 
first  is  that  we  are  not  to  set  up  and  maintain  with  our  foreign 
funds  institutions  or  ideals  which  do  not  enter  in  and  minister 
to  the  character  of  a  truly  national  Church.  Foreign  standards 
of  salary,  of  architecture,  of  organisation,  are  natural  for  us. 
They  may  be  not  only  alien  but  crushing  to  the  native  Church. 
The  second  is  that  we  are  not  to  do  for  others  what  they  can 
and  ought  to  do  for  themselves.  There  is  no  kindness,  there 
is  positive  harm  in  providing  for  native  agents  and  native 
agencies  on  a  scale  and  for  purposes  which  are  beyond  what 
they  can  and  ought  to  provide  for  themselves. 

The  problem  which  is  presented  here  is  no  mere  academic 


138  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

problem.  It  is  a  matter  of  life  and  death.  If  the  foreign  mis- 
sions are  to  be  charged  with  the  permanent  maintenance  of  the 
native  Churches  which  they  establish,  they  will  break  down  of 
their  own  weight  unless  the  native  Churches  themselves  decay 
from  a  want  of  exercise  of  the  functions  essential  to  life.  And 
the  native  Churches  will  scarcely  be  worth  maintaining,  as  they 
can  have  no  power  to  mould  a  national  life  in  which,  as  mere 
subsidised  projections  of  foreign  organisations,  they  can  have  no 
vital  part. 

There  are  situations  in  the  mission  fields  which  teach  us 
the  vital  importance  of  the  issue.  One  of  them  was  set  forth 
at  the  monthly  meeting  of  the  Calcutta  Missionary  Conference 
in  March,  1900.  The  following  account  of  the  Conference's 
consideration  of  "  Self-support  and  Self-propagation  in  the  Na- 
tive Churches,"  is  from  The  Indian  Witness  of  March  16,  1900: 

A   VITAL   QUESTION    OF   THE    HOUR 

Seldom  has  it  fallen  to  our  lot  to  attend  a  more  depressing 
meeting  in  some  respects  than  the  monthly  meeting  of  the  Cal- 
cutta Missionary  Conference  held  last  Monday  evening.  The 
subject  for  consideration  was  "  Self-support  and  Self-propaga- 
tion in  the  Native  Churches,"  introduced  by  a  paper  read  by 
the  Rev.  W.  R.  Le  Quesne,  of  the  London  Missionary  Society. 
The  native  Churches  of  Bengal  were  especially  in  thought.  De- 
clining to  discuss  the  second  part  of  his  theme,  on  the  ground 
that  self -propagation  was  impossible  while  self-support  remained 
unachieved,  Mr.  Le  Quesne  pointed  out  that  after  a  hundred 
years  of  missionary  labours  in  Bengal  the  hopes  cherished  con- 
cerning self-support  appear  to  be  almost  as  far  from  fulfilment 
as  ever.  Important  experiments  made  by  the  English  Baptist 
brethren,  in  the  essayist's  judgment,  have  proved  by  no  means 
satisfactory.  He  could  not  accept  the  plea  of  poverty  on  the 
part  of  Bengali  Christians,  for  in  other  sections  of  India  where 
similar  social  conditions  prevail,  self-support  is  far  more  ad- 
vanced. It  is  sometimes  claimed  that  the  salaries  of  pastors  are 
higher  than  the  people  can  afford,  but  men  of  character  and 
efficiency  are  required,  and  these  must  have  sufficient  to  main- 
tain themselves  and  their  families.  The  great  hindrance,  he 
thinks,  is  that  the  people  fail  to  realise  that  the  duty  of  sustain- 
ing the  institutions  and  ordinances  of  the  Gospel   rests  upon 


MISSIONS  AND  THE  NATIVE  CHURCHES        139 

them.  Their  idea  is  that  the  mission  is  beholden  to  them,  under 
obligation  to  provide  everything  for  them,  while  the  true  con- 
ception should  be  the  reverse. 

When  we  inquire  as  to  how  self-support  and  independence 
may  be  developed,  an  important  consideration  is  the  co-operation 
of  the  various  societies,  which  too  frequently  overlap,  so  that 
in  some  places  there  are  two,  three,  or  four  feeble  struggling 
churches  when  there  might  be  one  strong  self-sustaining  church. 
Union  of  forces  would  help  to  solve  the  problem.  The  grant-in- 
aid  system,  annually  reviewed  so  as  to  note  progress,  was  advo- 
cated. Contributions  in  kind  should  be  encouraged ;  also  thank- 
offerings.  In  some  places  it  would  be  helpful  if  churches  had 
plots  of  land  attached  on  which  pastors  could  raise  their  own 
rice,  etc.,  in  cultivating  which  their  people  might  help  with  labour. 
The  practice  in  Calcutta  of  Bengali  Christians  of  good  position 
who  do  not  identify  themselves  with  Bengali  churches,  is  a  per- 
nicious one  and  should  be  discouraged  in  all  possible  ways.  In 
conclusion,  it  was  suggested  that  the  Conference  appoint  a  special 
committee  to  take  the  whole  subject  into  most  careful  con- 
sideration. 

The  discussion  which  followed  was  a  most  interesting  one — 
painfully  interesting  in  one  point  of  view.  Every  missionary 
speaker  took  a  gloomy  view  of  the  present  spiritual  condition  of 
the  Bengali  Churches, — a  view  not  demurred  to  by  the  Bengali 
brethren  who  spoke ;  and  no  one  appeared  to  feel  encouraged 
as  to  the  prospects  for  improvement  in  this  respect  or  regarding 
the  attainment  of  self-support  in  the  near  future.  The  situation 
seems  to  be  something  akin  to  the  military  situation  in  South 
Africa  prior  to  the  arrival  of  Lord  Roberts.  Embarrassment, 
perplexity,  inability  to  surmount  the  difficulties  which  present 
themselves  prevail.  Who  will  show  the  way  out?  As  a  lady 
missionary,  whose  words  on  this  point  we  quoted  last  week, 
says :  "  We  need  a  Moses  to  lead  us  out  of  the  bondage  of 
parwarish  (dependence  for  support  on  others).  ...  I  myself 
feel  that  a  crisis  of  some  sort  is  impending,  and  that  we  greatly 
need  wise  generalship."  Rev.  A.  Paton  Begg,  L.  M.  S.,  regretted 
the  paper  had  not  taken  up  the  question  of  self-propagation.  He 
was  unable  to  see  the  great  advantages  to  arise  from  securing 
independence  of  village  churches.  Better  they  should  realise 
themselves  a  part  of  a  greater  and  stronger  whole.  He  recom- 
mended the  deepening  of  spiritual  life  and  the  preaching  of  the 
more  practical  Christian  duties. 

The  most  notable  contribution  to  the  discussion  was  that  fur- 
nished by  the  Rev.  I.  W.  Charlton,  of  the  Church  Missionary 


i4o  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

Society.  He  pointed  out  that  one  practical  difficulty  in  the  way 
of  self-support  is  the  universal  indebtedness  under  which  the 
village  people  groan.  They  are  in  bondage  to  the  mdhajans,  and 
while  these  conditions  prevail  an  aggressive  church  cannot  be 
developed.  Some  practical  method  of  delivering  our  Christian 
people  out  of  the  hands  of  the  mdhajans  is  a  first  necessity. 
Then,  we  should  do  our  best  to  make  the  provision  of  pastors 
and  other  workers  for  our  village  Christians  as  inexpensive  as 
possible.  If  Bengali  Christians  should  be  gotten  out  of  debt  and 
pastors  become  available  whose  salaries  are  not  two  or  three 
times  the  average  income  of  the  people,  independence  would  be 
in  sight.  The  people  strongly  object  to  be  obliged  to  educate 
their  pastors'  sons  and  dress  their  daughters.  If  some  pro- 
vision of  scholarships  for  the  children  could  be  made,  the  ques- 
tion would  be  simplified.  Much  interest  was  awakened  by  Mr. 
Charlton's  impressive  appeal  to  the  missionaries  to  aid  in  organ- 
ising a  united  Bengali  Church.  Let  all  come  together  and  prayer- 
fully consider  such  a  possibility.  Laying  aside  all  non-essentials, 
accepting  as  a  foundation  the  few  fundamental  truths  on  which 
all  are  agreed,  why  should  not  there  be  one  Bengali  Church? 
It  was  pointed  out  that  God  has  wonderfully  kept  the  way  open 
for  such  a  consummation ;  for  the  native  Christian  families  of 
Bengal  have  not  crystallised  into  churches  very  readily.  A 
father  may  be  an  agent  of  the  Church  of  England,  while  the 
son  is  attending  a  Wesleyan  day  school,  another  member  of  the 
family  being  a  Baptist  Bible  reader,  and  so  on.  If  a  united 
Bengali  Church  be  only  a  dream,  let  us  cease  talking  about  it; 
but  if  it  be  a  possibility  it  should  be  taken  hold  of  with  practical 
earnestness. 

Mr.  Kali  Charan  Banurji  said  he  had  no  desire  to  extenuate 
any  of  the  things  laid  at  the  door  of  the  native  Christians,  nor 
to  emphasise  the  responsibilities  resting  on  missions  and  mission- 
aries. He  differed  from  the  writer  of  the  paper,  believing  that 
self -propagation  must  precede  self-support.  An  individual  must 
be  a  missionary  before  he  is  technically  a  minister.  As  a  mis- 
sionary he  wins  a  soul,  then  he  becomes  a  pastor  to  feed  that 
soul.  When  our  churches  become  self-propagating — winners  of 
souls — they  must  feed  and  sustain  these  souls.  In  regard  to 
support  of  pastors,  the  question  is  one  of  men,  not  of  money. 
He  had  in  thought  a  church  which,  if  able  to  provide  support 
for  a  pastor,  absolutely  had  no  man  in  view  to  call  to  the  position. 
Others  who  participated  in  the  discussion  were  the  Revs. 
W.  R.  James  and  A.  Jewson,  B.  M.  S.,  P.  M.  Mookerjee,  S.  P.  G., 
and  the  writer.     Mr.   James   thought  the  difficulty  of  getting 


MISSIONS  AND  THE  NATIVE  CHURCHES       141 

missionaries  to  come  to  a  common  understanding  a  serious  one. 
We  have  begun  by  expecting  too  little  of  our  Christians.  All 
contributions  from  the  Societies  towards  building,  repairing,  and 
maintenance  of  chapels  should  be  stopped  at  once.  Mr.  Jewson 
expressed  the  conviction  that  a  closer  union  between  the  Bengali 
Christians  and  Christ  would  powerfully  tend  to  make  self-support 
possible.  Few  Bengali  Christians  have  any  true  knowledge  of 
Christ,  though  they  know  about  Him.  Rejoicing  in  the  ex- 
ceptions, the  majority  of  those  who  minister  to  Bengali  Chris- 
tians are  simply  imitators  of  missionaries,  retailing  the  things 
they  have  heard  them  say.  Missionaries'  meagre  vocabulary 
limits  the  scope  of  their  teaching,  hence  the  imitative  teaching 
of  native  ministers  is  of  an  inadequate  type.  Mr.  Mookerjee 
entreated  the  missionaries  to  make  a  beginning  in  the  direction 
of  a  united  Church.  The  native  Churches  as  they  are  now,  are 
what  the  missionaries  have  made  them.  "  Take  us  as  you  find 
us.  Make  a  beginning  here  in  Calcutta.  As  the  mission  work 
has  been  a  failure  up  to  the  present,  let  there  be  a  new  departure 
and  see  what  it  may  do  for  the  native  Church."  A  speaker 
said  that  in  view  of  what  he  had  heard,  the  feeling  came  to  him 
that  it  would  be  a  blessing  to  the  Church  of  Christ  in  Bengal 
if  every  foreign  missionary  were  deported,  and  the  Bengali 
Christians  left  to  work  out  the  problem  of  a  standing  or  falling 
Church  with  such  resources  as  they  possess.  It  is  an  appalling 
state  of  things  that  at  the  close  of  a  century  of  missionary  labours 
the  prospect  for  self-support  and  independence  is  so  gloomy  and 
unpromising. 

It  is  to  be  regretted,  we  think,  that  the  suggestion  made  by 
the  reader  of  the  paper  was  not  adopted.  The  worthy  chairman 
thought  a  good  way  to  shelve  further  development  of  the  agita- 
tion would  be  to  appoint  a  committee.  We  find  ourselves  com- 
pelled to  differ  from  him.  A  committee  ought  at  once  to  take 
hold  of  this  vital  question  in  the  interests  of  the  Church  that  is 
to  be,  and  see  if  there  is  not  some  practicable  plan  by  which  even 
an  approximate  solution  of  the  problem  may  be  arrived  at.  Is 
the  state  of  things  which  now  exists  in  Bengal  to  be  perpetuated 
for  another  century?  It  will,  unless  some  aggressive  practical 
action  is  taken.  It  is  a  most  humiliating  position.  The  Evan- 
gelical Churches  are  compelled  to  admit  that  their  earnest  en- 
deavours through,  say,  three  generations,  have  ignominiously 
failed  to  establish  anything  that  might  with  a  semblance  of  truth 
be  regarded  as  self-supporting  work.  The  most  depressing 
feature  of  the  situation  is  that  there  is  not  the  ghost  of  a  remedy 
in  actual  sight.    It  would  be  profitable  were  missionaries  to  drop 


i42  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

all  outside  work  for  a  season  and  give  their  undivided  and  best 
thought  to  this  most  important  problem.  We  hope  the  Calcutta 
Missionary  Conference  will  grapple  with  it  in  such  a  statesman- 
like way  as  to  remedy  the  blunders  of  the  past  and  save  the 
Christian  Church  of  Bengal  from  another  century  of  tutelage 
and  impotency. 

This  is  doubtless  a  too  discouraged  view.  It  shows,  however, 
that  missionaries  are  their  own  most  merciless  critics,  and  it 
indicates  the  penalty  that  the  future  pays  for  any  past  failure  to 
incorporate  in  the  character  of  a  native  Church  one  of  its 
fundamental  and  indispensable  elements. 

It  is  on  the  problem  of  self-government,  which  is  the  easiest 
problem  of  the  three,  and  which,  if  the  other  two  are  solved, 
will  entirely  take  care  of  itself,  that  attention  is  usually  fixed. 
This  has  been  because  with  our  Western  haste  and  passion  for 
order  and  mechanism  we  have  carried  organisation  ahead  of 
life.  Partly  so,  partly  because  we  have  often  found  the  work 
hard  and  have  been  thrown  back  on  siege  methods  and  have 
had  to  wait  longest  for  what  we  desired  most.  Also,  the 
whisper  of  nationality,  far  away,  has  often  in  good  providence 
breathed  early  in  the  hearts  of  the  new  Christians.  The  problem 
lies  inevitably  in  the  situation.  Men  of  two  nationalities,  repre- 
senting two  Churches,  one  a  foreign  Church  far  away,  the  other 
the  new  native  Church  now  at  hand,  are  working  together  for 
certain  ends.  What  are  their  ends  ?  How  are  they  to  be  related 
in  their  work  for  them? 

Their  great  end,  as  we  conceive  it,  is  the  evangelisation  of 
the  world,  and  with  this  and  what  is  to  flow  from  it  in  view, 
the  establishment  in  all  lands,  and  primarily  in  this  particular 
land,  of  an  independent  national  Church  which  will  fulfil  its 
own  mission  and  destiny.  And  an  independent  national  Church 
we  hold  to  be  one  which  is  genuinely  independent  and  national, 
which  has  no  organic,  ecclesiastical  connection  with  any  foreign 
Church,  which  is  under  no  foreign  bishop  or  Church  council, 
which  is  as  free  and  autonomous  as  the  nation  is  or  would  be, 
and  with  a  character  and  identity  which  lay  it  eye  to  eye, 
hand  to  hand,  mouth  to  mouth,  heart  to  heart,  like  the  prophet, 


MISSIONS  AND  THE  NATIVE  CHURCHES       143 

upon  the  body  of  its  people.  Now,  to  that  Church  as  our  ideal, 
in  its  incipiency  or  in  its  advancing  development,  what  is  to 
be  the  relation  of  the  foreign  mission  and  its  foreign  agents? 

First  of  all,  the  Western  Churches  at  a  distance  and  their 
representatives  near  at  hand  are  to  take  up  the  most  cordial 
and  generous  attitude  toward  the  ideal  of  freedom  and  the 
measure  of  attainment  which  the  native  Church  may  have 
reached.  Any  coldness  or  sceptical  criticism  is  disloyalty  to  the 
very  aim  of  the  foreign  missionary  enterprise.  These  Churches 
have  a  problem  upon  them  of  the  most  crushing  gravity.  They 
are  seeking  against  the  charge  of  unpatriotism  and  filial  treason 
to  make  a  home  in  their  national  life  for  the  ideas  which  belong 
there  and  the  power  which  alone  can  redeem,  while  these  are 
the  very  things  which  are  mistakenly  regarded  as  alien  and 
treasonable.  The  success  with  which  they  have  met  has  been 
wonderful.  It  has  been  our  own  success.  We  should  rejoice 
in  it,  and  in  every  way  in  our  power  encourage  these  Churches 
to  go  on. 

But  the  practical  question  remains.  These  Churches  are 
definite  organisations  with  an  established  jurisdiction.  What 
relation  shall  missionaries  have  to  them,  and  shall  they  have  to  the 
foreign  missions?  Three  answers  are  given  among  Presbyterians: 

( 1 )  It  is  proposed  that  the  missionaries  should  have  a  dual 
relationship,  that  they  should  remain  the  representatives  of  their 
home  Churches  and  subject  to  their  jurisdiction,  while  at  the 
same  time  they  should  sit  as  full  members  of  the  native  Church 
councils  or  as  assessors  with  the  right  to  vote,  but  independent 
of  their  jurisdiction  save  as  to  work  done  in  the  name  of 
the  native  Church.  This  is  the  plan  which  has  been  adopted 
in  the  case  of  the  English  Presbyterian  missionaries  in  China 
and  the  Scotch  Presbyterian  missionaries  in  India.  It  has  been 
ruled  that  any  such  dual  relationship  is  contrary  to  the  con- 
stitution of  the  Presbyterian  Church  in  the  United  States  of 
America ;  that  a  minister  cannot  be  a  member  of  two  presbyteries, 
much  less  of  two  independent  national  Churches. 

(2)  It  is  proposed  that  the  missionaries  should  withdraw 
from  their  home  presbyteries  or  other  courts  and  become  mem- 


i44  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

bers  exclusively  of  the  native  presbyteries  or  courts.  This  is 
what  some  of  the  American  Presbyterian  missionaries  have  done 
in  China  and  India  and  other  lands,  where  independent  Churches 
have  been  established.  It  is  what  the  Irish  missionaries  did  in 
Manchuria.  Dr.  Ross  tells  us :  "  In  connection  with  the 
establishment  of  the  Presbytery,  the  Irish  missionaries  did  a 
generous  thing.  Originally,  they  were  ecclesiastically  connected 
with  the  presbytery  by  which  they  had  been  ordained,  though 
they  had  an  organic  connection  with  the  General  Assembly.  As 
one  man  cannot  properly  be  a  member  of  two  presbyteries,  the 
Irish  members  proposed  to  sever  their  connection  with  the  home 
presbytery,  in  order  to  be  free  to  become  members  of  the  presby- 
tery of  Manchuria. 

"  At  our  first  presbytery  meeting  it  was  resolved  also  that 
the  native  presbytery  would  have  no  control  over  the  funds 
or  the  persons  from  abroad.  Each  society  on  the  field  would 
still  continue  to  hold  the  same  relations  to  the  home  Boards 
as  formerly.  But  the  native  presbytery  would  have  control  of 
all  funds  contributed  by  the  native  Church,  and  of  all  other 
Church  matters  whatsoever  appertaining  to  the  Presbyterian 
Church  of  Manchuria.  It  would  define  the  terms  of  admission 
into  the  Church,  the  causes  and  modes  of  discipline;  it  would 
take  charge  of  the  conduct  of  worship  and  the  administration 
of  all  Church  affairs.  The  presbytery  is  meantime  the  supreme 
court  of  the  Church." — (Ross,  "  Mission  Methods  in  Man- 
churia," p.  126  ff.) 

(3)  It  is  proposed  that  the  missionaries  should  retain  their 
ecclesiastical  connection  with  the  Churches  which  they  represent, 
sitting,  if  desired,  as  corresponding  members  in  the  native  Church 
councils,  as  they  might  do  if  visiting  and  working  in  any  land, 
and  giving  all  their  aid  and  support  to  the  native  Church,  but 
not  taking  up  any  organic  ecclesiastical  relationship  to  it. 

Now,  it  has  been  argued  with  unquestionable  validity  that 
there  are  no  proof  texts  in  the  Bible  with  which  to  support 
this  third  view.  (Article  quoted  in  The  Indian  Witness,  De- 
cember 12,  1907.)  And  we  admit  that  the  view  that  a  missionary 
should    never    identify    himself    ecclesiastically    with    a    native 


MISSIONS  AND  THE  NATIVE  CHURCHES        145 

Church  cannot  be  set  up  as  a  fundamental  principle.  Whether 
he  should  do  so  or  not  depends  upon  what  the  effect  of  his  course 
will  be  upon  the  realisation  of  the  ideal  of  a  truly  independent 
national  Church.  We  are  disposed  to  believe,  however,  that 
that  ideal  and  the  distinction  which  certainly  exists  between  such 
a  Church  and  a  foreign  missionary  agency  can  best  be  served 
by  the  missionary's  retention  of  his  home  connection,  by  the 
preservation  of  the  integrity  of  the  native  Church  as  a  national 
organisation,  and  by  separate  but  co-operative  activity. 

(1)  If  the  confusion  is  once  begun,  it  is  difficult  to  keep  it 
from  being  carried  too  far.  Alexander  Duff  discovered  this 
fifty  years  ago.  Mr.  Day  tells  us  the  story  frankly  in  his 
account  of  his  master.  He  says  that  he  and  his  native  asso- 
ciates saw  no  reason  why,  upon  their  ordination,  they  should 
not  be  made  members  of  the  mission  Council,  just  as  Dr.  Duff 
and  the  other  missionaries  were  members  of  the  presbytery, 
that  every  ordained  native  was  as  much  entitled  to  a  seat  in 
the  mission  as  the  ordained  missionaries,  and  that  the  distinction 
between  the  European  and  the  Indian  was  contrary  not  only 
to  the  principle  of  Presbyterian  parity,  but  to  the  essence  and 
spirit  of  Christianity  itself. — (Day,  "  Recollections  of  Duff,"  pp. 
210-216.)  The  position  was  strongly  taken.  If  the  ideal  of  a 
genuine  native  Church  was  to  be  given  up,  why  not  also  the 
ideal  of  a  genuine  foreign  mission?  What  is  the  use  of  pre- 
serving one  if  you  abandon  the  other?  One  confusion  may  as 
well  lead  to  the  other.  The  confusion  involves  even  more  to- 
day, for  the  work  of  women  in  foreign  missions  has  almost 
entirely  grown  up  since  that  day,  and  that  work  needs  to  be 
administered,  and  for  the  most  part  is  administered,  as  an  in- 
tegral part  of  the  whole  work  of  missions.  Now,  unless  ecclesi- 
astical ideas  are  radically  changed,  the  women  missionaries 
cannot  become  members  of  Church  courts.  But  the  oblitera- 
tions of  distinction  between  such  courts  and  missions  will  leave 
women  without  that  relationship  to  their  own  work  and  the 
other  work  of  the  mission  as  such,  in  its  integrity,  which 
capable  women  will  more  and  more,  and  not  less  and  less,  re- 
gard as  indispensable. 


i46  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

(2)  A  truly  self-conscious  national  Church  will  not  feel 
able  to  perpetuate  the  idea  of  a  large  voting  membership  subject 
to  the  jurisdiction  of  a  foreign  body.  When  the  Synod  of 
Central  China  was  organised  in  Nanking  in  1906  the  Chinese 
resolutely  refused  to  tolerate  the  plan.  For  foreigners  to  cease 
nominally  to  be  foreigners  and  to  become  Chinese  churchmen 
was  an  endurable  conception,  but  not  the  anomalous  arrange- 
ment of  the  possession  of  authority  without  submission  to  juris- 
diction. 

(3)  If  it  is  said  that  this  arrangement  has  been  accepted 
by  some  Chinese  Church  courts  and  has  been  welcomed  by  the 
Presbyterian  Church  in  India,  it  may  be  replied  that  that  is 
the  sad  element  in  the  situation,  that  there  are  native  Churches 
which  do  not  desire  independence,  and  which  shrink  from  tak- 
ing up  their  national  destiny.  They  wish  to  have  the  connection 
either  organic  or  actual  with  the  Western  Churches.  The  very 
evil  of  the  plan  is  that  it  weakens  their  sense  of  responsibility. 
They  do  not  take  up  their  financial  burden;  it  is  easier  to  lay 
the  problem  upon  the  foreign  Church.  They  do  not  deal  with 
their  distinctive  duty  and  the  racial  difficulties  which  press 
upon  them.    Their  mission  is  blurred  over  and  indistinct. 

(4)  And  even  if  the  missionary  wholly  gives  up  his  home 
connection  and  joins  the  native  Church  alone,  has  he  really  done 
so?  Is  he  no  more  a  foreigner?  Does  he  rest  down  upon 
and  derive  from  the  native  people  and  congregations  who  are 
the  substance  of  the  native  Church  ?  Is  he  part  of  the  nationality 
which  is  to  be  expressed  in  the  native  Church  and  which  is 
to  grow  out  from  it?  Is  he  no  more  the  representative  and 
flesh  and  blood  son  of  that  other  Church  and  that  other  na- 
tionality to  which  he  looks  as  to  race  and  home,  to  which  he 
expects  at  least  from  time  to  time  to  return,  and  to  report  as 
to  the  errand  with  which  that  other  Church  and  that  other 
race  charged  him  in  their  fulfilment  of  their  missions?  The 
editor  of  the  Indian  Standard  observes :  "  The  missionaries  think 
that  they  have  cut  themselves  off  from  the  home  Church  and 
fully  identified  themselves  with  the  Church  in  India,  but  of 
course  they  have  really  done  nothing  of  the  kind.     They  are 


MISSIONS  AND  THE  NATIVE  CHURCHES       147 

all  under  their  respective  mission  boards,  which  are  committees 
of  the  home  Churches.  The  true  presbytery  knows  nothing  of 
a  body  of  ministers  from  a  foreign  land,  outnumbering  the 
native  ministry  and  independent  of  it,  and  yet  dominating  all 
presbyterial  action  by  their  vote,  and  the  expedient  of  cutting 
the  ecclesiastical  tie  with  home  does  not  solve  the  problem.  .  .  . 
At  present  the  missionaries  are  virtually  in  the  position  of  the 
House  of  Lords,  with  this  advantage,  that  they  sit  and  vote 
in  both  houses."  The  native  leaders  are  not  slow  to  see  that 
the  missionary  is  not  really  subject  to  the  native  Church.  When 
a  missionary  in  Japan  said  that  he  regarded  himself  as  under 
the  jurisdiction  of  the  Japanese  Church,  Mr.  Uyemura  replied: 
"  The  missionaries  who  have  joined  our  presbyteries  are  in  no 
true  sense  integral  parts  of  the  Japanese  Church.  They  are 
members  in  name,  but  in  fact  they  are  under  the  control  of  an 
outside  organisation." — (Quoted  in  Brown,  "The  Foreign  Mis- 
sionary," pp.  314,  315.) 

(5)  Whatever  our  judgment  as  to  method,  however,  the 
principle  which  we  must  keep  clear  and  which  must  be  served 
by  whatever  we  do  is  the  principle  of  a  truly  independent  Church 
resting  on  the  life  of  a  people  and  leading  their  steps.  What 
we  do  in  the  way  of  method  and  relationship  is  right  or  wrong 
as  it  advances  or  retards  the  triumph  of  that  principle.  How 
to  decide  what  is  right  is  one  of  the  hardest  problems  in  mis- 
sionary administration.  The  Ethiopian  movement  in  South 
Africa,  which,  as  his  biographer  says,  broke  Coillard's  heart, 
has  been  one  of  the  most  vivid  recent  illustrations  of  the  diffi- 
culty. That  movement  has  embraced  many  impulses  and  di- 
vergent motives,  but  its  central  principle  was  a  desire  for 
Church  autonomy,  combined  with  a  desire  for  racial  unity,  a 
dim  feeling  after  a  national  destiny  on  the  part  of  a  considerable 
number  of  the  negroes  of  South  Africa.  "  The  Church  Separatist 
or  Ethiopian  Movement,"  said  the  Native  Affairs  Commissioners 
in  their  first  report,  "  has  as  its  origin  a  desire  on  the  part  of 
a  section  of  the  Christianised  natives  to  be  freed  from  control 
by  European  Churches.  Its  ranks  are  recruited  from  every 
denomination  carrying  on  extensive  operations  in  South  Africa, 


148  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

and  there  is  in  each  case  little  or  no  doctrinal  divergence  from 
the  tenets  of  the  parent  Church,  though  it  is  alleged,  and  the 
Commission  fears  with  truth,  that  relaxed  strictness  in  the  moral 
standard  maintained  frequently  follows.  It  is  the  outcome  of 
a  desire  on  the  part  of  the  natives  for  ecclesiastical  self-support 
and  self-control,  first  taking  tangible  form  in  the  secession  of 
discontented  and  restless  spirits  from  religious  bodies  under  the 
supervision  of  European  missionaries."  The  movement  had  "  a 
great  influence  upon  Dr.  James  Stewart's  last  years,"  Dr.  Wells 
tells  us.  "  It  was  one  of  the  sorest  disappointments  of  his 
life  and  yet  it  contributed  to  the  fulfilment  of  one  of  his  greatest 
dreams." — (Wells,  "Life  of  James  Stewart,"  p.  287.)  It 
wrought  no  end  of  harm  as  Dr.  Stewart  viewed  its  fruits, 
but  it  embodied  his  idea  of  a  truly  native  Church,  ruling  itself. 
And  it  represented  a  great  and  noble  craving.  The  second 
report  of  the  Native  Affairs  Commissioners  sets  forth  the  facts 
dispassionately : 

"  The  idea  of  secession,"  says  Mr.  Sargant  in  his  report  on 
native  education,  "  is  probably  not  due  only,  or  primarily,  to  a 
wish  on  the  part  of  the  native  leaders  to  manage  their  ecclesi- 
astical affairs  for  themselves,  but  also  to  a  real  longing  for 
national  union  through  a  single  spiritual  head  of  the  Church." 
And  he  points  out  that,  owing  to  the  distinctions  of  tribe  and 
language  by  which  the  natives  are  divided,  it  was  natural  that 
this  national  feeling  should  find  its  first  expression  through 
Christianity.  Similar  views  are  expressed  by  the  Rev.  F.  B. 
Bridgman  in  a  paper  on  the  Ethiopian  Movement  read  before 
the  Missionary  Conference  in  Natal.  "  The  fact,"  he  says,  "  that 
a  great  race,  hitherto  content  to  grovel,  has  at  last  begun  to 
aspire  is  momentous."  And  the  Coadjutor-Bishop  of  Cape 
Town,  who,  as  chaplain  to  the  Order  of  Ethiopia,  had  special 
opportunities  for  observing  the  inner  working  and  spirit  of  the 
movement,  declares  emphatically  that  its  "  root-principle  is,  I 
believe,  patriotism ;  in  other  words,  the  self-assertion  of  a  grow- 
ing national  life."  .  .  .  "  It  is  perhaps  surprising  that  so  able  a 
body  of  men  as  the  leading  South  Africa  missionaries,  with  their 
long  and  intimate  experience  of  native  affairs,  should  in  this 


MISSIONS  AND  THE  NATIVE  CHURCHES       149 

instance  have  failed  so  signally  to  read  the  signs  of  the  times. 
Had  they  gauged  the  position  more  accurately,  it  is  conceivable 
that  they  might  have  been  able  to  direct  the  movement  into  safe 
channels,  and  to  have  diverted  painful  breaches  between  native 
Churches  and  their  parent  missions.  But  the  workings  of  the 
native  mind  have  often  proved  inscrutable  to  the  white  man." 

Both  the  ideal  and  the  abuse  have  their  lesson  for  us,  that 
we  may  walk  wisely. 

In  Japan  the  question  of  relations  between  the  missions  and 
the  native  Churches  is  presented  in  a  far  more  advanced  stage. 
There  are  three  large  independent  Churches — the  Kumiai  or  Con- 
gregational, the  Church  of  Christ  or  Presbyterian,  and  the 
Methodist.  Each  is  ecclesiastically  free.  In  the  case  of  the 
Methodist  Churches,  the  relation  of  the  foreign  missionaries  is 
covered  in  the  following  addendum  to  the  Basis  of  Union: 

The  relation  of  the  Churches  in  the  United  States  and  in 
Canada  to  the  Methodist  Church  of  Japan  shall  be  co-operative, 
and  the  appropriations  made  from  time  to  time  by  the  several 
missionary  organisations  for  work  in  Japan  shall  be  regarded 
as  auxiliary  to  the  work  of  the  Methodist  Church  of  Japan 
(Nippon  Methodist  Kyokwai),  and  be  administered  accordingly. 

The  supreme  and  only  reason  for  the  presence  of  Methodist 
missionaries  in  Japan  is  to  aid  in  bringing  Japan  to  Christ  at 
the  earliest  possible  day.  In  order  to  carry  out  this  purpose,  the 
Methodist  Churches  of  the  United  States  and  of  Canada  must 
continue  to  bear  their  part  of  the  burden  which  rests  upon  the 
Methodist  Church  of  Japan,  and  continue  to  send  foreign  mis- 
sionaries to  Japan,  under  the  three  Boards  of  Missions  taking 
part  in  this  Union,  in  such  numbers  and  for  such  periods  as  may 
by  these  Boards  be  deemed  necessary  for  the  accomplishment  of 
the  object  above  stated.  These  missionaries  shall  hold  their 
Conference  relation  in  their  home  conferences  and  shall  be  sup- 
ported wholly  by  their  respective  Boards  of  Missions  until  re- 
called. 

In  recognition  of  this  aid  from  the  American  Churches,  and 
of  his  services  to  the  Church  in  Japan,  every  such  missionary 
shall  be  entitled  to  all  the  rights  and  privileges  of  membership 
in  the  Annual  Conference  to  which  his  work  for  the  preceding 
year  has  been  related,  except  on  questions  in  which  the  character 
or  Conference  relation  of  Japanese  preachers  is  involved. 


i5o  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

The  Church  of  Christ,  or  Presbyterian  Church  in  Japan,  allows 
missionaries  to  become  associate  members  of  the  presbyteries  if 
they  are  members  of  missions  recognised  by  the  Synod  as  co- 
operating with  the  Church.  Associate  members  do  not  have  the 
power  to  vote.  "  A  co-operating  mission,"  by  the  definition  of 
the  Synod,  "  is  one  which  recognises  the  right  of  the  Church  of 
Christ  in  Japan  to  the  general  care  of  all  the  evangelistic  work  done 
by  the  mission  as  a  mission  within  the  Church  or  in  connection 
with  it;  and  which  carries  on  such  work  under  an  arrange- 
ment based  upon  the  foregoing  principle  and  concurred  in  by 
the  Synod  acting  through  the  Board  of  Missions."  This  defini- 
tion followed  a  statement  of  the  ideals  and  desires  of  this  Church, 
which  it  addressed  to  the  missionary  societies  which  had  estab- 
lished it,  as  follows: 

It  is  now  more  than  thirty  years  since  the  Church  was  first 
founded,  and  already  it  has  a  history  that  may  rightly  be  de- 
scribed as  eventful.  Among  its  ministers  and  private  members 
there  are  many  who  are  well  deserving  of  respect.  It  extends 
from  one  end  of  Japan  to  the  other,  and  carries  on  its  work 
through  a  Synod,  presbyteries,  and  congregations.  It  has  a 
Board  of  Missions  actively  engaged  in  the  work  of  evangelisation 
and  the  establishment  of  churches.  Therefore,  it  seems  to  it 
reasonable  to  claim  that  it  has  a  right  to  a  voice  in  all  work 
carried  on  within  its  organisation  or  closely  connected  with  it. 
That  is  the  principle  for  which  the  Synod  stands ;  and  for  which 
it  believes  that  Churches  in  other  lands,  under  like  circumstances, 
would  stand. 

The  question  of  co-operation  has  agitated  the  Church  and 
the  missions  from  time  to  time  for  nearly  fifteen  years;  and 
there  are  those  who  think  the  agitation  uncalled  for,  since  co- 
operation is  already  a  matter  of  fact.  Whether  it  is  a  matter  of 
fact  or  not  depends  upon  the  sense  in  which  the  word  co-opera- 
tion is  used.  The  fact  that  the  missions  employ  evangelists,  aid 
in  the  support  of  pastors,  establish  and  maintain  preaching  places, 
while  at  the  same  time  they  also,  in  fact,  practically  retain  such 
matters  solely  within  their  own  control,  does  not  in  itself  con- 
stitute co-operation ;  if  by  co-operation  is  meant  a  co-working 
which  recognises  the  principle  for  which  the  Synod  stands.  Even 
though  the  work  done  extends  the  Church,  the  system  as  a  system 
is  that  of  an  imperium  in  impcrio. 


MISSIONS  AND  THE  NATIVE  CHURCHES       151 

The  co-operation  which  the  Church  seeks  is  a  co-operation 
of  the  missions  as  missions  with  the  Church  as  a  Church.  The 
missions  and  the  Church,  acting  as  independent  organisations, 
should  make  clear  and  definite  arrangements  with  each  other 
under  the  principle  set  forth;  and  the  work  of  the  missions 
as  missions  carried  on  within  or  in  close  connection  with  the 
organisation  of  the  Church  should  be  controlled  by  such  arrange- 
ments. Co-operation  should  find  a  partial  analogy  in  the  alliance 
between  England  and  Japan ;  not  in  the  relations  between  Japan 
and  Korea. 

The  Congregational  churches  have  had  a  different  problem 
because  of  their  individualistic  polity.  The  spirit  of  independ- 
ence was  naturally  strong  in  them,  and  they  have  had  for  years 
no  connection  with  the  American  Congregational  churches,  and 
now  have  taken  over  the  care  of  every  church  which  the  mis- 
sionaries were  aiding,  leaving  the  mission  as  an  evangelistic 
agency  free  from  every  relationship  to  an  organised  congrega- 
tion. What  results  may  flow  from  the  mission  work  the  Church 
will  absorb,  but  there  is  an  absolute  independence  between  the 
native  Church  and  the  foreign  mission.  It  is  even  proposed 
by  the  Kirisutokyo  Sekai,  a  Japanese  Congregationalist  paper, 
which  seems  to  have  hazy  ideas  of  what  a  real  self-supporting 
independence  is,  to  dissolve  the  foreign  mission  altogether  and 
absorb  its  members  as  individuals  in  the  Japanese  Church  so  long 
as  they  stay  in  Japan,  their  work  as  a  mission,  in  its  view,  being 
now  at  an  end.     (Quoted  in  the  Japan  Times,  June  28,  1908.) 

We  appeal  next  to  the  missionaries.  In  the  first  place  that 
you  would  dissolve  your  mission  church  and  join  the  Kumi-ai 
churches  in  those  places  where  you  severally  reside.  You  have 
come  here  for  the  purpose  of  converting  Japan,  and  there  is  no 
reason  for  not  uniting  with  our  churches.  Then  without  hesita- 
tion become  associate  members  of  our  Missionary  Society,  and 
take  part  in  all  its  evangelistic  work  under  the  direction  of 
the  Society.  Of  course,  as  individual  members  and  workers 
you  would  share  with  us  appropriate  duties  and  responsibilities, 
and  stand  in  the  same  rank  as  we.  Could  we  not  then  say  for 
the  first  time  that  you  were  really  promoting  the  conversion  of 
Japan  ? 

If  we  were  to  state  our  ideal  it  is  this,  that  as  there  is  neither 
male  nor  female  in  the  Church,  so  there  should  be  neither  native 


152  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

nor  foreigner  among  Church  workers,  but  those  who  have  ability 
and  aggressive  power  should  be  called  to  work  in  churches  as 
pastors  and  evangelists,  and  in  schools  as  teachers  of  theology 
and  languages.  Certainly  the  principles  of  finance  should  be 
followed  and  we  should  be  satisfied  with  salaries  fitting  our 
labours  and  position.  This  emphatically  would  be  to  gain  the 
respect  and  following  of  a  foreign  nation.  But  if  this  is  mere 
talk  and  impossible  of  realisation  at  once,  then  at  least  let  the 
missionaries  take  steps  to  dissolve  their  mission  church  and 
become  members  of  our  churches  and  Missionary  Society.  Then 
the  American  Board,  whenever  any  important  question  like  the 
sending  out  of  new  missionaries  arises,  would  naturally  consult 
with  our  Missionary  Society. 

We  hear  that  since  the  war  began  some  of  the  great  com- 
mercial houses  are  deeply  considering  the  future.  Those  houses 
that  are  doing  a  world  business  are  wondering  whether  it  is 
not  best  to  abolish  foreign  management,  and  pass  over  the  local 
branches  to  natives  of  the  respective  countries,  retaining  foreign- 
ers for  duty  simply  in  matters  pertaining  to  their  own  country. 
Even  for  business  houses  this  plan  is  no  miscalculation,  since  it 
would  be  a  gain  for  both  sides.  We  are  ashamed  that  this 
move  did  not  originate  in  our  religious  world,  but  was  first 
announced  from  the  business  world.  As  for  immediate  and 
decisive  steps,  rather  than  doing  nothing,  there  are  numerous 
things  that  were  better  done.  We  hope  that  the  American  Board 
will  be  the  first  of  all  foreign  boards  to  have  the  honour  of 
taking  this  decisive  step.  Foreign  missions  were  originally  un- 
dertaken in  the  hope  that  native  Churches  would  attain  to  in- 
dependence and  self-support.  Now  the  prayers  of  all  earnest 
friends  in  the  Lord  are  being  answered,  and  the  time  is  come 
for  the  Kumi-ai  Church  to  proclaim  an  independence  that  agrees 
with  facts.  Will  not  the  originators  of  this  work  rejoice  in 
experiencing  the  meaning  of  the  words:  "  He  that  hath  the  bride 
is  the  bridegroom ;  but  the  friend  of  the  bridegroom  which  stand- 
eth  and  heareth  him,  rejoiceth  greatly  because  of  the  bride- 
groom's voice:  this  my  joy  is  therefore  fulfilled." 

Here  are  three  different  stages  to  which  the  independence 
of  a  native  Church  has  come.  The  problem  will  take  on  yet 
other  phases  in  Japan,  and  new  forms  in  every  other  land.  But 
blessed  is  the  day  when  it  arises,  even  if  cloaked  with  difficulty. 
Doubly  blessed  is  the  mission  policy  which  prepares  for  it  from 
the  outset  and  lays  a  way  of  peace  for  its  coming. 


MISSIONS  AND  THE  NATIVE  CHURCHES        153 

But,  it  may  be  asked,  how  is  the  way  of  peace  to  be  laid? 
I  do  not  think  that  any  one  answer  can  be  given.  The  foreign 
missions  represent  many  nationalities  and  Church  polities,  they 
are  carried  on  among  people  of  varying  resistance  and  re- 
sponsiveness and  capacity.  Individual  missionaries  are  of  widely 
differing  temperaments  and  characteristics,  and  their  modes  of 
largest  influence  are  dissimilar.  No  one  prescription  can  be 
laid  down  covering  all  situations.  How  soon  and  in  what  man- 
ner the  native  Church  is  to  be  organised,  what  measure  of  au- 
thority it  derives  from  those  who  organize  it,  and  what  measure 
it  owes  to  no  body  of  men,  what  help  it  shall  receive,  and  in 
what  form — these  are  practical  questions  which  to  many  mis- 
sionaries will  appear  more  important  than  the  reiteration  of  a 
general  ideal  which  they  have  always  held.  But  they  are  ques- 
tions which  must  be  answered  in  the  light  of  the  varying  ele- 
ments which  enter  into  them  in  a  score  of  divergent  situations, 
and  we  shall  have  done  enough  now  if  we  have  come  to  see  more 
clearly  and  to  accept  more  unreservedly  the  ideal  of  self-gov- 
ernment for  the  Church  in  as  full  a  measure  as  possible 
from  the  beginning  and  in  complete  measure  as  soon  as 
possible.  Whatever  plans  we  do  adopt  will  be  determined  by 
the  heartiness  and  confidence  with  which  we  hold  to  this 
ideal. 

We  must  go  on  now  to  suggest  that  there  are  other  regards 
than  these  three  of  the  self-propagation,  self-support,  and  self- 
government  of  the  native  Church,  in  which  foreign  missions 
must  give  heed  to  the  ideal  which  they  set  before  the  Church 
and  the  form  and  principles  which  they  give  to  it  in  its  infancy. 
Both  the  spiritual  character  and  the  practical  methods  of  the 
native  Churches  will  be  determined  for  years  by  the  missions 
which  found  them.  The  manners  of  their  clergy,  down  to  their 
style  of  dress,  their  modes  of  worship,  their  forms  of  church 
architecture,  their  attitude  toward  their  former  religions  and 
the  customs  of  their  people,  their  standard  of  moral  and  re- 
ligious character  will  all  be  learned  from  their  missionary  teach- 
ers. In  many  mission  fields  they  have  already  been  learned, 
and   the   whole   problem   of   missions   has    become   complicated 


154  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

with  things  that  must  be  laid  aside,  lessons  taught  within  the 
Church  which  must  be  unlearned. 

Two  of  these  points  are  of  such  importance  as  to  demand 
special  notice.  One  is  the  matter  of  the  standard  of  Church 
membership  and  discipline.  In  some  cases  native  Churches  have 
raised  the  standard  which  they  were  given  and  become  more 
exacting;  in  others  they  have  lowered  their  tone.  They  are 
dealing  with  their  own  responsibilities.  But  at  the  outset,  and 
for  a  long  time,  the  influence  of  the  missions  will  set  the  stand- 
ard. What  shall  it  be,  easy-going  and  tolerant  or  high  and 
exacting?  Shall  baptism  be  the  mark  merely  of  separation  from 
the  old  heathenism  or  of  a  living  entrance  into  Christ?  On  the 
one  hand,  we  have  to  remember  that,  while  there  are  inward 
spiritual  revolutions  and  rebirths,  they  are  often  as  silent  and 
secret  in  grace  as  in  nature,  and  that  the  processes  of  God  and 
the  soul  are  orderly  and  slow.  We  are  dealing  in  many  cases 
with  men  of  insight  and  spiritual  desire,  and  in  some  lands 
with  earnest  people,  but  for  the  most  part  with  masses  of  men 
with  whom  patient  methods  are  required.  Dr.  Lawrence,  after 
his  wise  studies  on  the  ground,  thought  he  knew  of  nothing 
wiser  than  Bishop  Caldwell's  words: 

I  cannot  imagine  any  person  who  has  lived  and  worked 
amongst  uneducated  heathens  in  the  rural  districts  believing  them 
to  be  influenced  by  high  motives  in  anything  they  do.  They 
have  never  heard  of  such  things  as  high  motives,  and  they  can- 
not for  a  long  time  be  made  to  comprehend  what  high  motives 
mean.  An  enquiry  into  their  motives,  with  a  view  to  ascertaining 
whether  they  are  spiritual  or  not,  will  seem  to  them  like  an 
enquiry  into  their  acquaintance  with  Greek  or  algebra.  They 
will  learn  what  good  motives  mean,  I  trust,  in  time — and,  per- 
haps, high  motives,  too — if  they  remain  long  enough  under  Chris- 
tian teaching  and  discipline ;  but  till  they  discard  heathenism, 
with  its  debasing  idolatries  and  superstitions,  and  place  them- 
selves under  the  wings  of  the  Church,  there  is  not  the  slightest 
chance,  as  it  appears  to  me,  of  their  motives  becoming  better 
than  they  are.  .  .  .  The  only  hope  for  them  lies  in  their  ad- 
mission as  soon  as  possible  into  Christ's  school.  .  .  .  Whatever 
the  motive,  provided  it  is  not  sordid  or  disgraceful,  we  receive 
them. — (Lawrence,  "  Modern  Missions  in  the  East,"  p.  236.) 


MISSIONS  AND  THE  NATIVE  CHURCHES       155 

We  need  to  remember  this  on  the  one  hand.  On  the  other, 
we  need  to  recollect  that  it  was  the  austerity  of  its  moral  re- 
quirements and  the  reality  of  its  spiritual  energy  which  gave 
the  early  Church  its  victory.  If  the  native  Churches  are  to 
subdue  their  world  as  the  early  Church  subdued  its  world,  it 
can  only  be  by  virtue  of  their  indisputable  and  commanding 
moral  superiority,  sustained  and  invigorated  by  an  inner  life. 
In  India,  for  example,  Sir  William  Hunter  would  have  the 
Christian  Church  as  clean  of  the  drink  habit  at  least  as  Islam. 
"  I  for  one,"  said  he  in  an  address  at  the  Society  of  Arts  in 
London,  "  believe  that  if  Christianity  is  to  be  an  unmixed  bless- 
ing in  India,  it  must  be  Christianity  on  the  basis  of  total  ab- 
stinence." "  We  cannot  help  thinking,"  says  the  leading  paper 
of  North  India,  notoriously  unfriendly  to  the  missionary,  but 
giving  him  good  counsel,  "  that  the  duty  of  the  foreign  mission- 
aries who  have  been  the  means  of  introducing  Christianity  into 
India,  and  who  are  still  its  recognised  leaders,  is  to  give  the 
highest  and  best  presentation  of  religion,  and  not  to  yield  to 
any  passing  temptation  to  lower  the  standard  of  faith  and  prac- 
tice."— (The  Pioneer,  Editorial,  "Missions  Up-to-date,"  April 
23,  1908.) 

One  of  our  American  missionary  societies  made  an  attempt 
some  years  ago  to  state  the  sound  principle  on  the  subject  of 
the  standard  of  admission  and  of  discipline  in  these  terms: 

Recognising  that  Christian  character  is  a  growth,  and  that 
the  facts  of  Scripture  and  of  life  teach  that  patience  and  educa- 
tion are  necessary  to  the  development  of  high  moral  standards 
and  the  realisation  of  these  standards  in  conduct,  it  is  believed 
that  it  is  unprofitable  to  expect  the  fruits  of  eighteen  centuries 
of  Christian  culture  to  be  reproduced  in  a  generation  on  the 
mission  field,  and  unjust  to  demand  them  as  conditions  of  ad- 
mission to  the  Church.  At  the  same  time,  the  vital  importance 
of  establishing  from  the  outset  right  ideals  in  the  native  Churches 
must  be  recognised,  and  the  weight  of  judgment  should  be  given 
in  support  of  those  missionaries  who  contend  for  a  relatively 
high  standard  of  admission  and  discipline  as  essential  to  the 
strength  and  purity  of  the  native  Church.  It  is  not  regarded  as 
permissible,  for  example,  that  polygamists  should  be  admitted 


i56  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

to  the  Lord's  Supper,  or  the  establishment  of  distinctions  be- 
tween baptism  and  the  Lord's  Supper,  which  render  the  former 
only  an  introductory  and  inconclusive  ordinance,  open  to  those 
who  are  merely  catechumens.  Thorough  instruction  of  enquirers 
before  baptism,  and  the  inculcation  of  high  moral  obligations, 
should  be  provided  for.  On  the  other  hand,  regard  should  be 
had  to  the  antecedents  and  environment  of  the  people,  and 
emphasis  should  be  laid  not  so  much  upon  extended  knowledge 
or  even  conformity  to  set  requirements,  as  upon  earnestness, 
genuine  faith,  and  that  sincere  acceptance  of  Christ  which  will 
issue  in  true  living. 

There  are  some  who  take  exception  to  this  unyielding  judg- 
ment regarding  the  exclusion  of  polygamy  from  the  native 
Church,  holding  that,  while  polygamy  is  of  course  wrong,  we 
have  no  right  to  exclude  a  polygamist  who  is  truly  converted 
but  who  contracted  his  polygamous  relations  in  the  days  of 
his  ignorance.  With  regard  to  this  view  held  by  many  great 
missionaries,  we  suggest:  (i)  That  that  which  would  be  made 
the  ground  of  expulsion  if  in  the  Church,  should  constitute  a 
barrier  to  admission  to  the  Church;  (2)  that  it  is  not  Church 
membership  or  any  Christian  requirement  which  makes  polyg- 
amy wrong,  but  a  law  of  nature,  and  that  ignorance  or  mere 
compliance  with  usage  offered  as  an  excuse  for  the  contraction 
of  polygamy  cannot  warrant  its  admission  to  the  Church; 
(3)  that  the  only  way  to  keep  polygamy  out  of  the  Church  where 
it  is  acknowledged  that  it  ought  not  to  be  is  to  exclude  or  expel 
those  guilty  of  it;  (4)  that  the  requirement  that  a  polygamist 
should  live  in  marital  relation  with  only  one  wife  is  not  a  re- 
quirement that  he  should  cease  to  support  the  others;  on  the 
other  hand,  he  should  be  required  to  do  so;  (5)  that  there  is 
no  Scriptural  or  rational  ground  for  admitting  a  man  to  the 
Church  and  then  excluding  him  from  office,  as  some  propose, 
on  the  ground  of  his  marital  relation;  (6)  that  the  allegation 
that  such  a  course  is  recognised  in  the  Epistle  to  Timothy  in 
I  Tim.  iii :  2,  which  specifies  that  a  bishop  must  be  the  husband 
of  one  wife,  thereby  implying  that  there  were  ordinary  mem- 
bers who  had  more  than  one  wife,  can  only  be  defended  by 
acknowledging  that  the  statement  regarding  widows  in  I  Tim. 


MISSIONS  AND  THE  NATIVE  CHURCHES       157 

v :  9,  10,  namely,  that  each  should  have  been  the  wife  of  one 
husband,  proves  that  there  was  polyandry  also  in  the  early 
Church;  (7)  that  the  purity  of  the  home  is  an  essential  not 
to  be  imperilled  by  any  concession  or  in  any  way  whatsoever ; 
(8)  that  to  admit  polygamy  into  the  Church  defiles  the  ideal 
of  the  Church  as  described  by  Paul  in  the  noble  passage  in  the 
fifth  chapter  of  Ephesians,  and  cuts  at  the  foundation  of  Chris- 
tian morals  and  the  Christian  revelation ;  (9)  that  it  weakens 
the  testimony  of  Christianity  to  righteousness;  (10)  that  polyg- 
amous wives  have  no  right  to  continue  marital  relations  which 
can  be  defended  without  dissolving  the  foundation  of  purity ; 
and  (11)  that  it  does  not  affect  the  case  to  say  that  there  will 
be  but  a  few  exceptional  instances  of  such  baptisms.  It  is  a 
question  not  of  few  or  of  many,  but  of  essential  moral  principles. 
This  illustration  of  the  problem  of  the  standard  of  Christian 
morals  to  be  set  by  the  missions  suggests  the  other  point  to 
which  attention  was  to  be  drawn,  namely,  the  attitude  which 
foreign  missions  should  set  before  the  native  Churches  toward 
questionable  social  conditions  involving  religious  principles,  such 
as  ancestor  worship  in  China  and  caste  in  India.  The  mission- 
aries and  native  Churches  in  China  are  practically  unanimous 
in  their  judgment  that  ancestor  worship  contains  inadmissible 
idolatrous  elements,  and  they  have  agreed  with  small  dissension 
upon  a  common  attitude  toward  it.  Over  caste,  however,  there 
is  a  great  conflict  of  view.  It  is  evident  that  it  is  to  be  a  far 
more  massive  barrier  in  the  way  of  Christianity  than  ancestor 
worship.  Some  Chinese  seem  only  too  likely  to  abandon  what 
was  really  good  in  ancestor  worship  with  its  foolish  idolatrous 
elements,  while  others  are  perceiving  that  the  Christian  spirit 
of  reverence  for  the  dead  includes  all  that  was  worthy  in  their 
traditional  idea.  But  in  spite  of  all  that  has  been  done  to  dis- 
solve the  exclusiveness  of  caste  in  India,  it  remains  still  the 
most  deep-seated  institution  in  the  land,  so  deep-seated  and 
irrefragable  that  many  urge  the  abandonment  of  the  attitude 
of  absolute  hostility  to  it  taken  up  by  the  foreign  mission  move- 
ment, or  the  transfer  of  our  missionary  energies  from  the  assault 
on  the  caste-intrenched  people  to  the  unhindered  evangelisation 


158  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

of  the  low-caste  and  outcaste  peoples.  The  Bishop  of  Madras 
has  stirred  up  a  still  lively  controversy  (See  The  Baptist  Mis- 
sionary Review,  Bopatla,  India,  December,  1907)  by  arguing  that 
our  work  for  the  high-caste  people,  especially  through  our  col- 
leges, has  been  practically  fruitless,  while  low-caste  evangelisation 
has  met  with  immense  success,  and  that  this  is  evidence  not  only 
of  the  direction  which  the  providence  of  God  would  have  our  mis- 
sionary activities  take,  but  also  of  the  quickest  method  of  reach- 
ing the  high-caste  people  themselves,  who  see  already  the  ad- 
vancement of  the  classes  they  had  despised  through  the  uplift- 
ing influence  of  Christianity,  and  who  will  be  forced  to  consider 
the  claims  of  a  religion  whose  power  they  behold  and  through 
which  alone  they  can  hope  to  escape  being  outdistanced.  Many 
have  come  forward  to  argue  against  Bishop  Whitehead's  propo- 
sitions, and  the  result  of  his  declarations  will  be  sure  to  be 
more  work  and  better  work  for  both  high-caste  and  outcaste 
peoples.  On  the  other  hand,  Mr.  Bernard  Lucas  of  the  London 
Missionary  Society,  in  "  The  Empire  of  Christ,"  has  argued  for 
a  different  attitude  toward  the  caste  spirit.  It  is  not  entirely 
clear  to  us  just  what  Mr.  Lucas  would  have  us  do.  With  his 
principle,  "  There  should  be  no  baptism  outside  of  the  Church, 
there  should  be  no  caste  within  the  Church,"  we  heartily  agree, 
but  this  seems,  in  his  view,  to  involve  keeping  all  high-caste  con- 
verts out  of  the  Church  and  meanwhile  making  no  vigorous  effort 
to  dissolve  their  caste  narrowness,  but  waiting  until  Hindu 
society  is  prepared  to  come  over  bodily  into  Christianity.  It 
is  not  souls  out  of  the  ship  of  India,  to  quote  again  his  figure, 
whom  we  are  to  bring  in,  but  the  whole  ship.  How  are  we 
to  do  it?  Meanwhile,  is  the  Church  to  be  made  up  of  low-castes 
and  of  those  from  the  high-castes  who  have  naturally  of  them- 
selves given  up  their  caste  separation  and  come  into  that  body 
where  there  is  neither  low-caste  nor  high-caste,  but  where  all 
are  one  in  the  unity  of  their  Saviour?  It  is  clear,  however,  that 
Mr.  Lucas  would  not  have  caste  in  the  Church.  He  would  have 
foreign  missions  set  that  attitude  for  the  native  organisation. 
In  that  view  he  would  disagree  with  an  Indian  writer,  Lall 
Binary  Dass  in  The  Epiphany,  the  organ  of  the  Oxford  Mission 


MISSIONS  AND  THE  NATIVE  CHURCHES       159 

in  Calcutta  (January  16,  1909),  who  holds  that  caste  should  be 
taken  into  the  Church  and  dissolved  in  time  within,  as  was  the 
case  with  slavery.  "  In  a  caste-ridden  country  like  India,"  says 
Mr.  Dass,  "  where  caste  is  all  in  all,  you  cannot  root  out  in  one 
day  what  the  ages  have  done,  so  it  will  augur  well  if  this 
theoretical  system  be  kept  up  and  at  the  same  time  they  be 
made  Christians,  and  if  caste  itself  is  an  evil,  it  will  gradually 
melt  away  like  snow  before  the  noonday  sun,  when  the  true 
light  of  the  Sun  of  Righteousness  will  commence  to  shine  forth 
in  their  hearts."  The  foreign  mission  enterprise  in  setting  stand- 
ards for  the  Churches  which  it  creates,  cannot  accept  this  view 
any  more  than  it  could  provide  for  the  admission  of  polygamy 
and  slavery,  of  concubinage  and  idolatry,  in  the  hope  that  these 
would  in  time  disappear.  Christianity  means  something  moral 
and  social.  It  is  a  religion  which  embodies  ideals,  and  the 
Church  is  the  institution  which  expresses  those  ideals. 

At  the  same  time,  there  are  discriminations  to  be  made  in  the 
case  of  what  is  called  caste,  just  as  in  the  case  of  ancestor  wor- 
ship, which  embodied  one  of  the  noblest  of  human  sentiments. 
The  former  Bishop  of  Bombay,  Dr.  Mylne,  has  suggested  these : 
"  When  I  maintain  that  caste  must  go,  that  to  make  terms  with 
it  is  to  break  once  for  all  with  the  practical  Gospel  of  Christ, 
I  am  not  to  be  taken  for  a  moment  as  intending  that  the  edu- 
cated Brahman,  with  his  social  refinement,  is  to  be  treated  as 
a  traitor  to  Christianity,  if  he  determines  to  marry  his  children 
to  no  one  whose  social  position  would  render  their  happiness 
impossible."  And  in  his  review  of  Dr.  Mylne's  "  Missions  to 
Hindus,"  Mr.  Lucas  has  pointed  out  that  more  such  discrimina- 
tions must  be  drawn : 


Between  the  caste  spirit  and  the  spirit  of  Christ  there  is  an 
irreconcilable  opposition,  whether  that  caste  spirit  is  manifested 
in  the  caste  system  of  India  or  in  the  social  distinctions  of  the 
West.  But  just  as  there  are  social  distinctions  in  the  West, 
which  have  nothing  to  do  with  a  caste  spirit,  so  there  are  social 
distinctions  and  social  habits  in  India  which,  though  connected 
with  the  caste  system,  are  not  bound  up  with  the  caste  spirit. 
While  it  is  quite  true  that  caste  is  religious  as  well  as  social, 


160  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  India  of  to-day  is  by  no 
means  the  India  of  a  hundred  years  ago.  In  no  respect  has  India 
changed  more  during  the  past  century  than  in  the  position  which 
caste  occupies  in  the  thought  of  the  Hindu  of  to-day,  as  com- 
pared with  that  of  his  forebears  of  a  century  ago.  There  has 
been  a  divorce  going  on  between  caste  and  religion,  which  the 
missionary  of  the  twentieth  century  will  do  well  to  recognise. 
Amongst  the  educated  Hindus  it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that 
the  religious  aspect  of  caste  has  largely  ceased  to  be  operative. 
While  the  same  cannot  be  said  of  those  uninfluenced  by  English 
education,  yet  in  many  parts  of  India  the  bond  between  religion 
and  caste  has  been  very  greatly  loosened,  and  while  caste  is 
still  jealously  guarded,  it  is  far  more  as  a  social  than  as  a  re- 
ligious system.  These  changes  make  it  imperative  for  us  to 
change  our  attitude  towards  the  question  of  caste,  and  distinguish 
between  the  real  caste  spirit  with  which  we  can  make  no  terms 
and  the  social  habits  and  customs  which  are  merely  a  stage  in 
social  development.  Already  there  are  signs  that  the  time  is 
coming  when  the  acceptance  of  Christianity  will  not  involve  that 
breach  with  the  past  which  hitherto  has  been  inevitable. 

With  such  a  problem  a  truly  independent  national  Church 
would  be  far  more  competent  to  deal  than  a  foreign  mission,  and 
it  is  a  pity  that  there  is  not  such  a  Church  in  India  to  settle 
it  for  itself,  but  what  India  lacks  we  still  lack  ourselves,  both 
in  America  and  Great  Britain,  and  in  all  the  lands  from  which 
the  missionaries  go  forth. 

This  question  of  caste,  however,  is  only  part  of  a  larger 
problem,  namely,  the  establishment  of  the  foundations  of  the 
new  Churches  solidly  and  broadly  on  the  life  of  the  people.  Mis- 
sionaries begin  where  they  can,  knowing  that  all  souls  are 
Christ's.  Sometimes  they  reach  first  the  ignorant  and  poor; 
and  the  work  of  the  new  Church  is  taken  up  by  those  who  are 
not  the  natural  leaders  of  life.  Often  out  of  these  classes  the 
real  national  leaders  come,  and  God  demonstrates  again  His 
power  to  use  the  weak  to  confound  the  mighty.  But  often  the 
native  Church,  built  thus  on  one  class,  never  works  out  from 
it  but  remains  a  small  and  unrepresentative  society,  separated 
from  the  life  it  is  meant  to  mould.  Such  are  still  the  churches 
built  on  the  old  negro  communities  in  Bahia  and  Pernambuco 


MISSIONS  AND  THE  NATIVE  CHURCHES       161 

in  Brazil.  On  the  other  hand,  the  foundation  of  a  new  Church 
may  be  laid  in  a  higher  class,  with  results  not  less  marked.  As 
a  keen  observer  of  mission  work  writes  from  Japan:  "If  you 
look  for  the  source  of  the  financial  weakness  and  the  unsatisfac- 
tory history  of  the  Church  in  Japan  in  regard  to  relations  with 
the  missionary  body,  you  will  find  that  one  fact  explains  both. 
It  has  been  the  poor  but  proud  Samurai  who  have  filled  the 
churches  and  the  ministry.  They  have  been  to  us  a  strength 
and  a  weakness,  our  pride  and  our  torment.  The  Heimin,  or 
plebeian  poplation,  have  been  too  ignorant  and  superstitious, 
too  much  under  the  domination  of  their  Buddhist  priests  and 
their  Shinto  schoolmasters,  to  open  the  ear  to  the  Word.  But 
we  are  at  last  getting  at  the  Heimin,  and  there  are  better  days 
ahead.  We  shall  never  have  substantial,  steady  churches  till 
they  are  made  up  less  of  Samurai  officials,  army  and  navy  men, 
teachers,  and  students,  and  more  of  plain  farmers,  business  men, 
and  workmen."  The  broader  the  foundation  of  the  new 
Churches,  the  more  representative  their  membership,  the  more 
truly  will  they  embody  the  ideal  seen  in  the  churches  which 
St.  Paul  founded,  which  did  indeed  rest  upon  the  common  life 
of  men,  but  also  knew  no  inaccessible  class  and  claimed  all 
society  as  the  sphere  and  instrument  of  the  Church's  mission. 

There  are  doubtless  some,  however,  to  whom  the  breadth  of 
the  foundation  of  the  native  Churches  will  seem  of  less  im- 
portance than  its  depth,  who  will  be  less  concerned  that  these 
foundations  should  be  laid  out  widely  upon  life  than  that  wher- 
ever they  are  laid  they  should  be  laid  with  precision  and  exact- 
ness. They  are  so  firmly  convinced,  in  other  words,  of  the 
universal  warrant  and  validity  of  some  of  these  convictions  which 
they  themselves  hold,  that  they  cannot  believe  that  any  founda- 
tions are  rightly  laid  that  are  not  laid  in  these  convictions.  Now, 
all  of  us  belong  to  this  class  in  things  that  really  are  universal 
in  Christianity.  That  is  why  the  foreign  mission  movement 
exists.  To  lead  men  to  the  living  and  true  God  by  the  way  of 
His  only  Son,  Jesus  Christ  our  Lord,  Who  is  the  Way,  the 
Truth,  and  the  Life,  and  by  Whom  alone  men  can  find  the 
Father — that  is  the  sole  spring  and  power  of  the  missionary 


162  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

enterprise.  In  the  faith  and  love  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  the 
Son  of  God,  and  the  Saviour  of  the  World,  we  find  all  our 
own  life,  and  deep  therein  we  believe  it  to  be  indispensable 
above  all  things  else  to  lay  the  foundation  of  the  new  Churches. 
But  we  are  not  of  those  who  believe,  as  some  do,  that  any 
particular  ecclesiastical  polity  or  historic  statement  of  Christian 
doctrine  should  be  laid  down  bodily  upon  the  native  Churches. 
In  an  older  day,  a  notable  letter  of  counsel  to  its  foreign  mis- 
sionaries from  one  of  our  great  Churches  contained  the  admoni- 
tion :  "  Be  careful  to  maintain  in  all  your  missions  the  worship 
and  order,  as  well  as  the  doctrine  of  your  ozvn  Church.  We  have 
no  desire  either  to  cherish  ourselves  or  to  recommend  to  you 
a  sectarian  spirit.  But  we  cannot  think  that  a  warm  attach- 
ment to  our  own  beloved  Church,  and  a  decided  preference 
of  its  rites  and  polity,  deserve  to  be  so  styled.  As  long  as  we 
believe  them  to  be  founded  on  the  Word  of  God,  we  must  con- 
sider an  adherence  to  them  as  our  incumbent  duty.  And  as 
you  are  the  representatives  among  the  heathen  of  the  Church 
of  your  choice,  we  trust  you  will  faithfully  maintain  all  its  claims 
and  usages."  And  within  the  last  two  years  an  earnest  mis- 
sionary bishop  in  another  great  Christian  Church  declared :  "  The 
one  grand  object,  of  course,  which  every  evangelist  must  pur- 
sue, is  the  development  of  an  indigenous  Church,  which  shall 
work  upon  lines  of  its  own,  taking  nothing  from  European 
Christianity  but  the  Bible,  the  Creeds,  the  Sacraments,  and  the 
historic  Orders  of  the  Ministry." — (Mylne,  "Missions  to  Hin- 
dus," p.  130.)  I  do  not  wonder  that  an  equally  earnest  mis- 
sionary has  been  stirred  to  reply:  "One  may  ask,  with  some 
amount  of  wonder,  what  there  would  be  left  to  take  from  Euro- 
pean Christianity  after  you  have  taken  the  Creeds,  which  repre- 
sent its  theology ;  the  Sacraments,  which  stand  for  its  conception 
of  ritual,  and  the  Orders  of  the  Ministry,  which,  presumably, 
represent  its  ecclesiastical  organisation?  If  all  these  are  to  be 
imposed  bodily  upon  the  Indian  Church,  one  wonders  upon  what 
'  lines  of  its  own  '  the  indigenous  Church  is  going  to  work.  The 
author  seems  to  join  us  in  this  wonder,  for  he  immediately  adds: 
'  The  goal  may  lie  centuries  in  front  of  us.     At  present  it  is 


MISSIONS  AND  THE  NATIVE  CHURCHES        163 

not  in  sight,  even  dimly  descried  on  the  horizon.'  As  long  as 
Christianity  is  identified,  as  our  author  seems  to  identify  it,  with 
Western  theology,  Western  ritual,  and  Western  ecclesiasticism, 
so  long  will  the  Christianisation  of  India  be  delayed,  and  the 
Indian  Church  remain  an  exotic,  instead  of  becoming  indigenous. 
We  have  so  guarded  against  producing  an  Indian  Christian  here- 
tic, that  we  have  equally  failed  to  produce  a  theologian." — (Ber- 
nard Lucas  in  the  Chronicle  of  the  London  Missionary  Society, 
July,  1908,  p.  130.)  Our  Western  ecclesiastical  polities  are  not 
universal  or  final.  Each  of  them  grounds  itself  upon  Scripture, 
but  they  are  mutually  contradictory.  Our  Western  theological 
statements  are  not  universal  or  final.  How  can  they  be?  They 
were  not  divinely  inspired.  They  are  the  products  of  only  a 
small  part  of  mankind,  the  outgrowth  of  a  small  fraction  of 
the  experience  of  humanity,  a  mere  fragment  of  the  still  in- 
completed education  of  mankind  by  God.  The  men  who  go 
out  as  foreign  missionaries  can  go,  of  course,  only  as  the  men 
they  are,  believing  what  they  believe,  and  if  they  believe  that  the 
presiding  eldership  or  supralapsarianism  or  immersion  or  bap- 
tismal regeneration  is  fundamental  and  universal,  they  will  teach 
it,  and  we  shall  have  to  work  out  from  the  consequences  as  best 
we  can.  But  we  believe  nothing  of  the  sort,  nor  that  episco- 
pate or  presbytery,  nor  Calvinism  or  Arminianism,  nor  anything 
else  of  polity  or  of  creed,  but  simply  that  the  fact  that  Jesus 
Christ,  the  Son  of  God,  is  come  the  Saviour  of  the  whole  world, 
is  the  fundamental  and  universal  thing,  the  rock  on  which  to 
build  the  new  Churches  of  the  nations.  We  must  doubtless  help 
and  guide  these  Churches,  and  those  who  do  it  will  do  it  in  the 
way  in  which  alone  they  conscientiously  can,  but  a  true  foreign 
mission  policy  will  make  room  for  a  free  life  in  the  native 
Churches,  and  will  rejoice  in  their  adaptation  of  means  to  meet 
their  own  needs  in  organisation  and  in  their  guidance  by  the 
Spirit  of  God  into  new  constructions  and  fresh  emphasis  of  the 
enduring  truth  of  God,  too  rich  and  infinite  to  have  been  codified 
by  any  one  man,  or  one  race,  or  one  age.  Surely  we  can  say  this 
with  no  want  of  love  or  loyalty  to  the  Church  in  which  we  grew 
up  and  through  which  we  do  our  work.     We  are  not  less  true 


164  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

to  her  and  her  vision  of  truth  when  we  declare  these  to  be  but 
a  part  of  a  nobler  whole,  and  when  we  watch  and  wait  with  long- 
ing desire  for  the  completion  of  the  whole  body,  absorbing  ours 
in  its  fulness,  and  the  gathering  of  the  fuller  light,  eclipsing 
ours  in  its  brightness. 

At  the  same  time,  it  must  be  said  that  as  yet  the  native 
Churches,  even  the  strongest  and  most  independent,  have  pro- 
duced nothing  notable  either  in  the  way  of  Church  organisation 
or  in  the  way  of  perception  or  statement  of  truth.  Dr.  Datta 
has  told  us  the  reason,  in  the  case  of  India : 

The  Indian  Church  has  failed  on  the  whole  to  produce  a 
distinctive  theology  capable  of  reaching  the  minds  and  hearts 
of  the  people.  The  religious  history  of  India  would  lead  us  to 
look  for  something  of  this  kind.  Yet  the  nearest  approach  to 
a  distinctively  Indian  interpretation  of  Christ  has  come  from 
a  non-Christian  sect,  the  Brahmo  Samaj.  The  cause  is  not  far 
to  seek.  Indian  Christianity  is  as  yet  a  Western  product  in  the 
process  of  being  grafted  on  to  India.  The  children  of  converts 
know  little  of,  and  care  less  for,  the  whole  heritage  of  Indian 
thought  and  religion.  They  are  brought  up  with  a  stock  of 
Christian  ideas  in  a  society  of  their  own.  The  conversion  of 
their  parents  has  severed  all  the  old  relationships.  Another 
consideration  which  throws  light  on  this  barrenness  of  the  Indian 
Christian  religious  mind  is  the  fact  that  up  to  the  present  the 
members  of  the  Church  have  been  drawn  from  castes  which  do 
not  afford  a  soil  in  which  theological  ideas  naturally  spring  up 
and  come  to  harvest.  There  have  been  Christians  like  K.  M. 
Banerji  and  Nehemiah  Goreh,  but  the  converts  from  the  castes 
which  show  special  philosophical  aptitudes  are  few  and  insuffi- 
cient to  form  an  intellectual  society  in  which  there  can  be  a 
free  interchange  of  ideas.  New  interpretations  of  Christian  doc- 
trine will  scarcely  be  possible  till  the  intellectual  level  of  the 
Indian  Church  is  raised  either  by  greater  accessions  from  the 
Brahman  class,  or  by  an  extraordinary  development  of  the  mind 
of  the  outcaste  people  who  form  the  bulk  of  the  Christian 
community. —  (Datta,  "The  Desire  of  India,"  p.  255.) 

The  foundations  of  the  native  Church  are  neither  sufficiently 
deep  nor  sufficiently  broad.  But  even  if  they  were,  as  they  are 
becoming  in  Japan,  we  must  beware  of  cherishing  too  great  ex- 


MISSIONS  AND  THE  NATIVE  CHURCHES       165 

pectations.  Some  have  been  bold  to  hope  for  far  more  than 
there  is  any  prospect  of  receiving.  Truth  grows  out  of  life. 
It  is  the  character  of  God  unfolding  itself  to  men  and  races 
as  they  live  up  into  God.  It  is  not  a  thing  which  men  or 
Churches  can  find  by  saying:  "Go  to,  now,  watch  me  discover 
new  truth."  The  pride  of  nationalism,  which  is  the  near  peril 
of  independent  native  Churches,  is  a  sure  prevention  of  great 
spiritual  discovery.  But  in  all  our  relations  to  the  new  Churches 
we  should  be  zealous  to  guard  their  liberty  and  should  not  post- 
pone the  day  of  their  own  independent  guidance  by  the  divine 
Spirit  by  loading  them  with  the  symbols,  whether  of  worship 
or  of  organisation  or  of  doctrine,  which  have  grown  up  in  our 
long  racial  development  in  the  West. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  may  be  justly  argued,  and  the  truth 
must  be  taken  up  into  our  views,  that  the  new  Churches  are 
entitled  to  start  where  we  have  come  and  not  where  we  began, 
that  there  is  no  reason  why  they  should  go  back  to  the  first 
century  to  repeat  for  themselves  the  long  history  which  has 
produced  us.  The  truth  here  is  the  obvious  truth  that  we  should 
do  our  best  and  act  with  all  the  wisdom  which  this  history  has 
taught  us  in  dealing  with  them.  The  error  lies  in  forgetting 
that  much  of  this  history  has  been  bitter  and  destructive,  and 
that  we  are  only  now  returning  to  those  fundamental  principles 
of  the  Lord  and  His  Apostles,  from  which  the  centuries  have 
led  us  so  far  away. 

Two  further  aspects  of  the  problem  of  the  relation  of  mis- 
sions to  the  native  Churches  are  brought  before  us  in  the  words 
quoted  a  moment  ago  from  Dr.  Datta.  He  is  speaking  of  India. 
It  is  in  India  that  the  difficulty  of  the  work  of  raising  up  a  truly 
independent  Church  seems  to  be  greatest.  It  is  the  oldest  field, 
and  there  are  more  native  Christians  there  than  in  any  other 
mission  land,  but  the  Church  is  still  a  foreign  organisation  on 
Indian  soil.  There  are  self-supporting  congregations.  There  are 
able  Indian  ministers.  There  is  now  a  new  and  hopeful  National 
Missionary  Society,  but  even  this  was  a  foreign  idea  and  largely 
inspired  and  initiated  by  foreign  energy.  There  seems  to  be 
wanting  the  spirit  of  a  brave  and  sacrificial  nationalism,  such  as 


166  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

led  Paul  Sawayama  to  starve  himself  in  the  Naniwa  church  in 
Osaka  and  is  already  moving  in  what  is  to  be  the  mighty  Chris- 
tian Church  in  China.  This  may  be  due  in  part  to  the  chill  of 
caste,  in  part  to  the  placidity  of  the  national  character.  Partly, 
I  think,  it  is  due,  and  the  fact  shows  how  varying  are  the 
conditions  in  which  the  missionary  problem  must  be  wrought 
out,  to  the  effect  of  the  political  situation.  The  goal  of  Indian 
ambition  has  been  service  under  a  foreign  Government  ruling 
the  political  life  of  India.  The  analogy  of  service  under  a 
foreign  Church  ruling  the  religious  life  of  India  has  been  too 
natural  to  resist,  or  even  to  be  conscious  of  its  needing  resistance. 
The  conditions  have  been  precisely  the  reverse  of  those  in  Japan. 
The  problems  of  missionary  policy  are  entwined  with  the  deepest 
issues  of  national  life  and  are  rendered  vastly  more  difficult 
thereby.  If  a  native  Church  leads  in  a  nationalistic  movement, 
it  is  exposed  to  the  peril  of  political  confusion  and  entanglement, 
the  danger  of  disloyalty  in  India,  of  chauvinism  in  Japan.  If 
it  does  not  lead,  it  is  distrusted  for  unpatriotism  and  discredited 
as  the  motive  power  of  national  life.  The  American  Churches 
confronted  in  the  days  of  the  Revolutionary  War  a  situation 
reproduced  in  its  essential  principles  to-day  in  many  Asiatic 
lands. 

Dr.  Datta's  words  suggest  not  only  the  diversity  of  conditions 
on  the  mission  fields,  but  also  the  problem  of  the  relation  of 
missions  to  the  education  of  the  second  generation  of  the  native 
Church.  It  is  from  that  generation  that  the  capable  and  effective 
leaders  come.  It  is  there,  also,  that  the  most  bitter  disappoint- 
ments are  met.  In  many  mission  schools  it  is  this  class  which 
presents  the  chief  difficulty,  more  than  boys  from  the  homes 
of  the  old  religions.  In  many  stations  it  is  they  who  paralyse 
the  Church  and  nullify  the  apologetic  value  of  its  life  and 
example.  Of  such  a  generation  the  Report  of  the  Basle  Mission 
in  Western  India,  for  the  year  1890,  speaks:  "Most  of  these 
[Christians]  have  not  tasted  the  thralldom  of  idolatry  and  the 
enmity  of  the  world,  but  have  enjoyed  all  the  privileges  con- 
ferred upon  them  through  the  medium  of  Church  and  school. 
They  feel  their  present  elevated  position ;  their  energies,  however, 


MISSIONS  AND  THE  NATIVE  CHURCHES        167 

have  not  as  yet  found  their  proper  channels.  Many,  especially 
of  those  who  till  now  have  not  experienced  what  a  new  birth 
is,  in  their  desire  to  improve  their  circumstances  are  impatient 
that  things  develop  so  slowly  and  not  in  the  very  way  they 
wish,  and  are  often  apt  to  suspect  the  very  missionaries  to 
whose  instrumentality  most  of  them  owe  their  prosperity,  and 
who  leave  untried  no  means  or  way  to  push  them  on,  as  if  it 
were  they  who  were  keeping  them  down  and  hindering  their 
progress." — (Quoted  by  Cust,  "Missionary  Methods,"  p.  23.) 
The  report  is  speaking  of  native  Christians  maintained  by  mis- 
sionary industrial  institutions.  The  risk  of  fostering  the  spirit 
of  complaining  dependence  in  such  work  is  its  great  danger. 
But  the  second  generation  is  always  a  peril  because  it  is  also 
a  hope.  What  may  be  so  much  better  may  be  also  so  much 
worse.  If,  in  the  new  Christian  homes  the  Christian  atmosphere 
has  not  really  permeated  all  the  life  now  emptied  of  its  old 
sanctions  and  motives,  if  the  boy  grows  up  with  no  God,  either 
false  or  true,  really  sobering  his  life  and  holding  it  in  awe, 
if  he  learns  contempt  for  superstition  without  having  come  to 
faith,  his  latter  state  is  worse  than  his  father's  first.  The  mis- 
sion, in  seeking  to  produce  a  true  and  abiding  Church,  will 
remember  that  the  second  generation  is  as  important  as  the 
first.  That  is  one  reason  why  missions  are  not  content  to  see 
a  number  of  people  converted  and  then  pass  on.  That  is  the 
end  of  only  the  first  stage  of  their  work.  There  is  now  a 
second  stage,  and  beyond  that  there  is  a  third. 

In  the  education  of  the  second  generation  one  of  the  most 
foolish,  and  yet  one  of  the  most  natural  things  to  do,  is  to 
bring  choice  young  men  to  the  Western  countries  for  their  train- 
ing. That  is,  it  is  natural  when  the  aim  of  the  enterprise  is 
forgotten  and  the  laws  of  human  nature  and  leadership  are 
unknown.  It  seemed  at  the  first  to  many  friends  of  missions 
that  the  best  thing  that  could  be  done  would  be  to  establish 
training  schools  for  natives  in  the  home  lands.  They  tried  it. 
One  of  the  despairs  of  missionary  organisation  now  is  that  they 
cannot  persuade  well-meaning  individuals  to  accept  the  results 
of  the  bitter  experience  of  a  hundred  years.     The  Moravians 


1 68  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

were  among  the  first  to  come  to  wisdom  in  the  matter.  "  We 
disapprove  of  bringing  converts  to  Europe  on  any  pretext  what- 
ever," they  say  in  their  instructions,  "  and  think  it  would  lead 
them  into  danger  of  injury  to  their  own  souls."  Hundreds, 
probably  thousands  of  young  men  and  women  have  been  harmed 
and  spoiled  for  all  useful  service  in  this  way.  Instead  of 
being  prepared  for  true  work  as  members  and  leaders  of  their 
own  people,  they  have  gone  back  separated  from  them,  with 
unnatural  tastes  and  ambitions,  representing,  or  desiring  to  repre- 
sent something  foreign,  obstructing,  and  in  some  fields,  practi- 
cally destroying  the  hope  of  establishing  a  free  and  living 
Church.  There  have  been  exceptions,  many  especially  among 
the  Chinese  and  Japanese  who  have  studied  abroad,  but  the 
sending  forth  of  such  men  should  be  by  the  missions  or  Churches 
on  the  foreign  field.  When  they  come  otherwise,  the  greatest 
kindness  that  can  be  shown  is  to  let  them  save  their  character 
by  complete  self-support.  The  man  who  can  do  this  may  go 
back  to  be  a  true  power  among  his  people,  and  by  the  character 
which  he  has  achieved  for  himself  help  his  race  to  a  full  realisa- 
tion of  its  character. 

I  said  that  after  the  second  stage  of  relations  between  mis- 
sions and  native  Churches,  the  long  stage  between  the  first 
organisation  of  the  Church  and  its  achievement  of  a  free  and 
competent  independence,  there  was  a  third.  We  have  not 
reached  that  stage  yet,  when  the  actual  co-operation  of  the 
foreign  missions  is  no  longer  needed,  and  when  any  help  to 
be  rendered  by  the  foreign  Church  may  be  given,  if  it  is  needed 
at  all,  outright  and  direct.  Even  when  that  time  comes,  as 
some  Japanese  mistakenly  think  that  it  has  come  in  their  coun- 
try, there  may  still  be  for  some  time  a  work  for  the  selected 
missionary  to  do,  very  delicate  and  difficult,  but  valuable.  Mr. 
Ebina,  a  very  "  advanced "  leader  of  the  Japanese  Congrega- 
tional Church,  last  year  addressed  a  statement  to  the  foreign 
missionaries  in  Japan  in  which  he  set  forth  services  which  he 
believed  they  were  still  needed  to  render,  and  there  are  others: 

The  mission  of  the  missionary  is  not  merely  to  propagate 
ideas.     With  his  own  character  he  must  seek  to  influence  the 


MISSIONS  AND  THE  NATIVE  CHURCHES       169 

character  of  others.  We  must  pay  the  profoundest  respect  to 
the  character  of  England  and  America,  which  has  been  nurtured 
now  for  over  a  thousand  years.  Without  doubt  there  are  among 
them  contemptible  men,  but  when  we  speak  of  them  as  a  whole, 
it  is  not  too  great  praise  to  say  that  they  excel,  not  by  a  day 
nor  a  year,  but  by  a  hundred  years.  And  foreign  missionaries 
are  their  representatives.  For  example,  let  us  compare  the  atti- 
tude of  some  of  our  young  evangelists  with  that  of  the  young 
foreign  missionaries.  The  former,  after  their  studies  in  Tokyo, 
go  out  into  the  country  to  preach,  but  after  two  or  three  years 
they  grow  pessimistic,  disheartened,  give  vent  to  dissatisfaction 
and  complaints,  cannot  endure  their  calling.  The  latter  exhibit 
endurance,  determination,  boldness,  and  humility.  Without  free- 
dom in  the  use  of  the  language,  in  the  midst  of  an  imperfect 
social  organisation,  compelled  to  listen  to  most  discordant  music, 
living  among  the  Japanese  with  their  utterly  different  customs, 
these  men  deserve  our  admiration.  The  two  are  simply  not  to 
be  compared. 

Nay,  more.  The  Japanese  are  far  from  attaining  to  the  in- 
domitable perseverance  of  the  men  who  have  gone  with  their 
Gospel  to  such  places  as  Africa,  the  South  Sea  Islands,  and 
central  China.  It  is,  of  course,  true  that  there  are  defects  among 
the  Christians  of  England  and  America,  but  as  gentlemen  and 
as  ladies  they  conduct  themselves  as  if  they  had  received  the 
baptism  of  Bushido.  Now,  you  missionaries  are  the  represent- 
atives of  these  men  and  women.  Therefore,  as  elder  brothers, 
it  is  your  duty  to  give  to  the  Japanese  the  refining  influence  of 
this  pure  and  lofty  character.  To  be  a  genuine  Christian  gentle- 
man is  the  highest  thing  that  a  Japanese  can  learn.  We  must 
hope  that  you  will  take  a  more  positive  attitude  toward  the 
Japanese.  Because  of  your  deep  reserve,  you  have  suffered  to  go 
unsaid  many  things  that  you  wished  to  say.  As  far  as  you 
were  concerned,  this  was  unavoidable,  but  your  beloved  younger 
brethren  need  your  reproof  whenever  occasion  offers.  Even 
though  you  should  be  disliked  and  hated  for  it,  in  the  name 
of  Christ  you  should  have  all  boldness.  When  viewed  from 
the  Christian  standpoint,  the  Japanese  character,  down  to  the 
very  words  they  use,  needs  no  little  reform.  There  certainly 
must  be  many  things  that  meet  your  eyes  and  ears  which  as 
Christians  cause  you  pain.  We  trust  that  on  these  points  you 
will  not  hesitate  to  wield  the  lash.  We  know  of  your  efforts  to 
make  apologies  for  the  Japanese  before  Westerners,  and  we 
are  deeply  grateful  therefor;  but  we  cannot  help  hoping 
that    for    the    benefit    of    the    Japanese    themselves    you    will 


i7o  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

point  out  their  faults  without  reserve,  and  try  to  improve 
them. 

We  must  perfect  ourselves  by  means  of  the  religious  con- 
sciousness of  Germany,  England,  and  America.  Christianity, 
except  that  of  these  three  countries,  we  cannot  regard  very 
highly.  Nor  do  we  think  that  we  should  abandon  our  Shinto, 
Buddhism,  and  Confucianism,  or  set  aside  our  Bushido  to  em- 
brace such  a  faith.  The  Christianity  of  the  Protestant  nations 
alone  has  value  for  the  whole  world.  This  Protestant  religious 
consciousness  may  in  a  certain  sense  be  said  to  be  of  greater 
importance  than  the  Scripture.  The  Old  Testament  has  value 
only  as  this  consciousness  reveals  in  it  a  new  meaning.  And 
the  true  value  of  even  the  new  Testament  can  be  revealed  only 
as  one  possesses  this  consciousness  and  experience.  It  goes  with- 
out saying  that,  if  this  living  consciousness  and  experience  are 
wanting,  Old  and  New  Testament  alike  cannot  reveal  this  won- 
derful glory.  Our  revered  and  beloved  foreign  missionaries  are 
the  living  representatives  of  this  lofty  religious  consciousness 
and  experience.  We  Japanese  even  now  demand  just  this  thing. 
Whether  the  nation  shall  have  a  vigorous  and  well  rounded 
development  or  not  depends  on  whether  or  not  we  assimilate 
this  consciousness  and  experience. 

Such  being  the  case,  is  not  your  mission  in  Japan  perfectly 
clear?  The  purpose  of  your  preaching  is  not  to  save  men  from 
Hell ;  there  is  no  need  for  that  sort  of  preaching  in  Japan.  The 
Japanese  have  set  their  faces  toward  Heaven  and  are  making 
progress  in  that  direction.  If  the  old  methods  of  missionary 
work  are  to  be  continued,  your  mission  is  surely  ended.  But 
if  you  will  share  with  other  men  and  with  another  people  your 
own  experience  and  the  religious  consciousness  of  your  nations, 
and  if  the  burden  of  your  message  is  the  common  enjoyment 
of  the  blessings  of  the  kingdom  of  Heaven,  your  mission  in 
Japan  is  manifest.  It  is  your  unique  duty  to  share  with  the 
men  of  Japan  the  basic  religious  consciousness  of  the  Protestant 
nations.  Was  it  not  for  just  such  work  as  this  that  Christ 
died  upon  the  cross?  The  religious  consciousness  of  the  Japanese 
possesses  a  certain  excellence  of  its  own,  but  I  need  not  say  how 
immature  it  is.  You,  with  your  strong,  clear,  ethical  conscious- 
ness, and  your  kindly,  peaceful,  loving  sensibilities,  have  you 
not  a  motive  that  ought  to  call  forth  faith  from  us  men  of 
Japan?  If  you  are  conscious  of  this,  then  your  mission  is  as 
clear  as  the  day. —  (Danjo  Erina,  on  "  The  Mission  of  the  For- 
eign Missionaries  in  Japan,"  in  the  Shin j in,  translated  in  the 
Japan  Weekly  Mail,  March  2j,  1909.) 


MISSIONS  AND  THE  NATIVE  CHURCHES        171 

For  how  long  a  time  in  the  great  mission  fields  of  the  world 
the  foreign  missionary  enterprise  has  a  work  to  do  we  cannot 
say.  Everything  can  be  predicted  but  the  unfolding  of  life, 
and  it  is  with  life  that  we  are  dealing.  But  the  goal  will  be 
the  more  quickly  and  surely  reached  if  we  see  clearly  three 
things :  first,  the  great  principle  on  which  we  are  working ; 
second,  the  great  need  that  must  be  supplied;  and  third,  the 
great  difficulty  which  we  meet. 

The  great  principle  we  have  already  defined.  It  is  the  estab- 
lishment of  true  national  Churches.  There  may  be  some  who 
feel  that  the  ideal  of  the  unity  of  humanity  requires  something 
more  than  this.  "  A  theological  ideal  which  I  believe  should 
determine  in  a  measure  the  ecclesiastical  principle  in  mission 
work  is  that  of  the  Church  Catholic,"  writes  a  thoughtful  mis- 
sionary. "  This  involves,  I  take  it,  not  only  the  unity  of  all 
Christians  in  any  given  land,  but  also  unity  of  all  Christians 
in  all  lands.  The  conception  of  as  many  independent  Churches 
as  there  are  countries  or  nations  needs  the  complemental  idea 
that  all  members  are  one  body,  permanently  united  in  service 
and  in  life."  It  is  indisputably  so.  But  the  unity  of  the  body 
is  the  unity  of  many  diverse  members.  The  unity  of  the  family 
is  the  unity  of  its  separate  individuals,  and  the  richness  and 
power  of  the  family  life  depend  on  the  perfection  of  individual- 
ism in  its  members.  The  unity  of  humanity  requires  the  free 
development  of  all  those  members  of  humanity  whose  perfection 
of  separate  service  is  to  make  possible  the  perfect  character  and 
service  of  the  whole.  And  those  members  of  humanity  are  the 
nations  and  the  Churches  each  within  its  nation.  The  nation 
is  as  divine  an  institution  as  either  the  family  or  the  Church, 
and  is  to  have  its  own  religious  life  uttered  and  inspired  by  the 
Church.  The  late  Bishop  Whipple,  presiding  bishop  of  the 
American  Episcopal  Church,  set  forth  our  principle  in  his  auto- 
biography : 

I  believe  that  national  Churches  are  the  normal  law  of 
Church  extension,  and  that  in  the  past,  centralisation  of  authority 
beyond  national  bounds  has  been  full  of  mischief  and  has  brought 
sorrow  to  the  Church.     In  my  sermon  before  the  Lambeth  Con- 


172  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

ference  of  1888,  I  said:  "  We  meet  as  representatives  of  national 
Churches,  each  with  its  own  peculiar  responsibilities  to  God 
for  the  souls  entrusted  to  its  care,  each  with  all  the  rights  of 
a  national  Church  to  adapt  itself  to  the  varying  conditions  of 
human  society,  and  each  bound  to  preserve  the  order,  the  faith, 
the  sacraments,  and  the  worship  of  the  Catholic  Church  for 
which  it  is  a  trustee." 

In  these  words  I  voiced  the  sentiment  of  our  late  primate, 
Bishop  Williams,  who  wrote  me  before  my  departure  for  the 
Lambeth  Conference,  expressing  the  hope  that  in  all  our  delibera- 
tions nothing  would  be  done  to  affect  the  prerogatives  of  national 
Churches,  affirming  that  in  the  past  the  greatest  evils  which 
have  come  to  the  Church  have  come  through  usurpation  of 
the  rights  of  national  Churches,  and  that  it  was  more  impor- 
tant that  we  should  maintain  our  primitive  and  apostolic 
position  because  the  Church  of  England  was  allied  to  the 
State.   .    .    . 

Each  national  Church  has  its  own  particular  difficulties  grow- 
ing out  of  the  sad  divisions  among  Christian  men,  and  under 
God  it  alone  can  solve  these  difficulties  and  heal  these  divi- 
sions. There  is  danger  that  this  work  may  be  hindered,  if 
not  prevented,  by  any  appearance  of  the  intervention  of  a 
foreign  Church  against  which  unjust  prejudices  might  be 
aroused. 

There  is,  thank  God,  a  growing  recognition  among  all  Eng- 
lish-speaking Christians  that  they  have  a  common  mission  in 
evangelising  the  world.  But  until  the  race  of  jingoes  shall  have 
perished  from  the  earth,  I  believe  that  an  intervention  of  one 
national  Church  in  the  affairs  of  another  will  certainly  bring 
sorrow. — (Whipple,  "  Lights  and  Shadows  of  a  Long  Episco- 
pate," pp.  459-463.) 

This  is  the  ideal  that  we  seek,  the  ideal  of  free  national 
Churches,  through  which  alone  a  universal  Church,  rich  with  all 
the  varied  treasure  of  humanity,  can  be  realised. 

The  great  need  is  for  leadership,  not  primarily  missionary 
leadership,  though  the  missionaries  themselves  meeting  these 
great  problems  face  to  face  are  ever  seeking  for  this,  but  the 
leadership  of  strong  native  men  who,  knowing  their  own  people, 
resting  upon  them,  holding  them  fast,  will  accomplish  among 
them  that  of  which  the  missions  have  dreamed  and  for  which 
they  have  toiled. 


MISSIONS  AND  THE  NATIVE  CHURCHES       173 

And  the  great  difficulty  is  not  in  the  policy  of  the  missions, 
nor  in  the  ideals  of  the  missionaries.  It  is  in  human  nature. 
Men  respond  slowly  to  God.  They  were  made  for  Him,  and 
the  deep  hunger  is  there,  but  they  will  not  come.  The  ideal  of 
perfecting  the  spiritual  character  of  a  race,  of  realising  the 
dream  of  a  united  humanity — none  other  can  compare  with  it, 
but  there  are  nearer  interests — daily  bread  and  games,  and  war 
and  trade,  and  the  roar  of  the  whole  great  world  overwhelms 
the  whisper  of  its  soul.  The  new  Churches  are  made  up  of 
common  human  beings  like  ourselves,  but  without  our  Christian 
inheritance.  Their  leaders  are  men  of  their  own  ranks.  Where 
are  there  any  others?  Some  of  them  are  good  and  thoughtful 
men,  who  share  our  ideals  and  are  earnestly  working  to  make 
them  real.  Some  of  them  are  eager  to  reach  the  end  without 
travelling  over  the  intervening  road.  They  want  self-govern- 
ment when  there  is  as  yet  nothing  to  govern.  Their  thoughts 
are  of  places  rather  than  of  service.  We  are  told  of  the  "  one 
Christian  Gautama  (who)  sitting  under  his  tree  to  shake  the 
Asiatic  world  with  his  thoughts,  would  be  worth  all  the  English, 
Scotch,  or  American  missionaries  who  have  laboured  or  died 
for  their  faith  since  Henry  Martyn  or  Dr.  Carey."  But  we 
cannot  forget  that  "  the  early  Church  had  to  wait  centuries  for 
its  Augustines  and  its  Chrysostoms,  and  to  endure,  in  early 
converts  who  took  the  lead,  much  unripe  fruit.  The  Gnostics 
were  instances  of  Greek  Christianity  trying  to  cut  loose  from 
the  Hebrew  leading  strings.  Monasticism  was  another  out- 
growth of  the  amalgamation  of  pagan  and  Christian  ideas  by 
new  converts.  But  the  deepest  depths  reached  by  Christian 
heretics  were  as  nothing  to  the  degradation  Buddhism  under- 
went at  the  hands  of  new  converts,  who  took  the  lead  in  shaping 
its  presentation  to  their  countrymen.  The  Tai-pings,  again,  are 
an  illustration  of  what  Christianity  might  become  in  the  hands 
of  a  Chinese  '  Christian  Gautama,  sitting  under  a  tree  to  shake 
the  Asiatic  world  with  his  thoughts.'  It  is  evident  that  long 
contact  with  the  Gospel  constitutes  the  necessary  prerequisite 
to  sane  and  effective  missionary  work." — (Editorial,  "Missions 
and  Heredity,"  The  Sunday  School  Times,  July  17,  1897.)     It 


i74  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

is  no  short  and  easy  task  which  we  have  undertaken,  and  the 
difficulties  are  great, — not  short,  for  it  will  take  our  lifetime; 
not  easy,  for  it  will  take  our  lives,  and  difficult  because  it  is 
great,  but  short  and  easy  for  God,  and  sure  if  He  has  us  for 
His  free  and  unresisted  working. 


IV 
MISSIONS  AND  POLITICS 


IV 
MISSIONS  AND  POLITICS 

THE  political  problems  of  missions  arise  from  the  fact 
that  the  missions  are  foreign,  the  missionaries  who  carry 
them  on  are  foreigners,  and  the  religion  which  they 
carry,  claiming  to  be  universal,  is  seen  to  be  a  foreign  religion 
by  those  to  whom  it  is  offered.  Christianity  in  the  first  three 
centuries  faced  grave  political  questions,  but  it  did  not  face 
these  problems  of  modern  missions.  The  early  Christian  mission 
was  carried  on  in  the  Roman  Empire.  The  missionaries  were 
native  Roman  citizens  or  Roman  subjects.  The  religion  was 
hostile  to  the  established  religion  and  it  was  at  times  proscribed, 
but  it  was  not  foreign  in  the  sense  in  which  Christianity  is 
foreign  to-day,  as  complicated  with  a  foreign  civilisation  and 
foreign  governments;  at  the  outset  it  was  allowed  a  free  course, 
and  the  persecutions  when  they  came  were  not  continuous  or 
permanent.  The  issue  was  one  of  domestic  politics,  of  the  rela- 
tion of  Church  and  State,  of  the  adjustment  of  the  Christian 
and  his  religion  to  the  political  order  in  which  they  belonged. 
This  is  only  part  of  the  problem  to-day.  It  is  the  universal 
part  to  which  there  are  many  elements  added  by  the  distinctive 
character  of  modern  foreign  missions. 

The  political  aspects  of  Christian  missions,  accordingly,  are 
inevitable.  The  Boxer  troubles  brought  them  forward  into  the 
thought  of  all  the  world,  but  they  were  not  new.  Fifty  years 
before  they  had  been  pressed  on  the  world  in  connection  with 
the  Indian  Mutiny,  and  scarcely  anything  was  said  in  1900  about 
the  political  status  of  missionaries  and  the  political  problems  of 
the  movement  that  had  not  been  said  in  1857,  or  even  earlier. 
At  their  very  inception  foreign  missions  were  so  entangled  with 

i77 


178  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

politics  that  it  almost  seemed  that  the  enterprise  would  be  stifled 
at  its  birth.  The  East  India  Company  prohibited  the  work  and 
excluded  the  missionaries  from  its  territories.  Carey  had  to 
begin  his  work  under  the  Danish  flag.  Judson  was  shut  out 
from  India  by  political  opposition  and  had  to  change  his  plans 
and  settle  in  Burmah,  and  there  all  sorts  of  political  per- 
plexities beset  him.  For  years  the  work  in  India  was  either 
forbidden  or  discouraged  or  offset  by  the  East  India  Company. 
When  in  1807  the  missionary  press  at  Serampore  issued  "  An 
address  to  all  persons  professing  the  Moslem  faith,"  the  Danish 
Governor  of  Serampore  was  instantly  requested  by  the  Governor- 
General  and  Council  of  the  East  India  Company  to  interpose  his 
authority  to  prohibit  the  issue  of  any  more  copies  of  the  pam- 
phlet or  of  any  publications  of  a  similar  description.  Not  long 
after,  the  British  authorities  issued  an  order  forbidding  preach- 
ing and  prohibiting  the  missionaries  from  printing  any  books 
"  directed  to  the  object  of  converting  the  natives  to  Christianity." 
And  the  resolutions  of  the  Supreme  Council  to  this  effect  were 
justified  on  the  ground  that  "  the  obligation  to  suppress  within 
the  limits  of  the  Company's  authority  in  India  treatises  and 
public  preachings  offensive  to  the  religious  persuasions  of  the 
people,  were  founded  on  considerations  of  necessary  caution,  gen- 
eral safety,  and  national  faith  and  honour." 

Many  non-Christian  lands  were  entirely  closed  not  only  to 
missionaries,  but  to  all  foreigners,  such  as  Japan,  Korea,  and 
China.  When  foreigners  were  at  length  admitted  to  these  coun- 
tries it  was  by  political  arrangements  which  applied  equally  to 
all  classes  of  people,  and  none  could  enter  save  on  the  basis  of 
these  arrangements.  To-day  there  are  countries  such  as  Turkey 
where  no  one  can  enter  without  a  passport  granted  by  his  gov- 
ernment, and  in  some  of  these  lands  like  Turkey  and  Persia 
there  are  traditional  political  arrangements  governing  all  native 
Christian  bodies,  which  bring  at  once  all  who  have  relations  to 
these  bodies  within  an  absolutely  unavoidable  tangle  of  political 
questions.  And  the  proposition  to  make  Christian  disciples  in 
these  Moslem  lands  raises  immediately,  as  we  shall  see,  the  most 
acute  political  issues. 


MISSIONS  AND  POLITICS  179 

Even  those  who  think  that  missionaries  should  not  be  re- 
ligious propagandists,  and  who  find  in  their  religious  zeal  the 
source  of  the  political  perplexities  which  arise,  approve  of  the 
medical  and  educational  work  of  missions.  But  such  work  can 
only  be  carried  on  in  buildings  and  on  land,  the  acquisition  and 
titles  of  which  open  at  once  the  whole  political  issue.  Treaties 
have  to  be  made  covering  these  questions,  registrations  are  re- 
quired, rights  have  to  be  defined,  and  problems  of  taxation 
settled.  The  missionary  movement  has  to  be  carried  on  on 
the  earth,  and  all  the  problems  of  the  earth  ensnare  it. 

These  political  bearings  of  foreign  missions  are  simply  in- 
evitable and  inescapable.  Missionaries  have  created  some  of 
them,  some  unwisely,  some  unavoidably,  but  some  have  been 
created  for  them  by  others,  or  have  lain  in  the  nature  of  things. 
They  are  here  now,  at  any  rate,  and  the  movement  must  deal 
with  them. 

The  Western  nations  will  not  let  missions  escape  from  their 
political  relationship.  Even  if  they  wished  to  escape  they  would 
not  be  allowed  to  do  so.  Citizens  are  citizens,  and  each  nation 
cannot  do  otherwise  than  keep  watch  over  its  own.  The  problems 
springing  from  such  simple  watchfulness  and  protection  have 
been  eclipsed  by  the  consequences  of  the  acts  of  Western  na- 
tions in  using  missions  as  pretexts  for  invasion  and  aggrandise- 
ment. A  missionary  pretext  served  Germany  as  the  ground  for 
action  in  Africa,  which  brought  on  the  partitionment  of  the  con- 
tinent, and  it  was  Germany's  action  in  Shantung  in  the  seizure 
of  Kiao-Chou  bay  which  partly  caused  and  entirely  precipitated 
the  Boxer  uprising.  France  has  been  guilty  of  more  offences, 
though  no  act  of  hers  has  yielded  such  tragic  results  as  Ger- 
many's two.  For  damages  inflicted  on  French  missions  in  the 
interior  of  China  the  French  consul  at  Choongking  demanded 
as  compensation  "  mining  rights  in  six  districts  of  Szechuen, 
extending  over  six  degrees  of  latitude,  together  with  an  in- 
demnity of  1,200,000  taels.  In  May,  1898,  Pere  Berthollet,  a 
French  missionary  in  Kwangsi,  was  murdered.  Among  other 
compensations  for  this  outrage,  the  French  Government  ob- 
tained the  right  to  build  a  railway  from  Pakhoi  to  Nanning. 


180  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

This  concession,"  adds  Professor  Reinsch,  "  was  sought  mainly 
in  order  to  prevent  a  grant  of  the  concession  to  Great  Britain. 
The  manner  in  which  religious,  industrial,  and  political  con- 
siderations are  combined  in.  this  case  produces  a  somewhat  in- 
congruous result." — (Reinsch,  "  World  Politics,"  p.  146.)  No 
one  has  protested  against  such  incongruities,  such  iniquities, 
as  the  missionaries  have  done.  There  may  have  been  rare  indi- 
viduals who  welcomed  them,  but  no  one  who  loves  justice, 
much  less  any  one  who  understands  and  accepts  the  missionary 
aim  can  do  otherwise  than  abhor  them  and  lament  the  disastrous 
effects  upon  the  unity  of  the  world  and  upon  the  missionary 
enterprise  which  is  its  chief  hope,  of  the  lawless  brigandage 
and  international  crimes  of  Western  nations.  The  non-Christian 
peoples  cannot  be  blamed  for  identifying  missions  and  politics 
and  the  mission  cause  suffers  incalculably  from  the  confusion. 

The  fact  of  the  confusion  immensely  complicates  and  hinders 
the  missionary  movement.  The  movement  even  without  such 
confusion,  presented  in  its  purity,  would  be  difficult  of  under- 
standing in  many  countries.  Its  unselfishness  would  be  mis- 
interpreted and  its  ideals  mistrusted.  But  the  Eastern  nations 
have  not  been  left  free  to  view  it  in  its  purity.  The  foreign 
missions  which  we  carry  on  are  met  by  the  most  intricate  net- 
work of  political  misconceptions.  An  article  in  the  Nida-Ye- 
Vatan  in  Teheran  in  1907,  protesting  against  the  agreement 
between  Great  Britain  and  Russia  as  to  spheres  of  influence  in 
Persia,  shows  how  far  the  effects  of  proceedings  in  China  reach, 
for  no  wrong  of  this  sort  has  ever  been  done  in  Persia: 

"  So  then  we  with  loud  voice  say  to  the  Persians,  if  you 
do  not  yourselves  invite  the  Russians  and  the  English,  for  a 
thousand  years  they  will  not  enter  your  country.  The  invitation 
to  them  is  in  several  ways.  One  is  to  oppress  the  subjects  of 
foreign  countries,  and  it  is  also  necessary  that  we  make  this 
point  clear.  The  subjects  of  foreign  countries  place  themselves 
in  the  region  of  oppression,  and  for  the  sake  of  advancing  their 
own  country  are  ready  to  give  themselves  to  death,  as  is  the 
custom  of  the  foreign  priests  for  the  most  part;  and  it  is  ne- 
cessary that  in  this  matter  there  should  be  special  care." 


MISSIONS  AND  POLITICS  181 

Dr.  Ross  has  described  for  us  the  frame  of  mind  to  which 
the  first  missions  in  Manchuria  had  to  address  themselves: 

At  the  initiation  of  the  mission  in  Newchang  in  1872  it  was 
discovered  that  the  Chinese  were  deeply  and  angrily  suspicious 
of  the  missionary.  As  we  read  in  Du  Halde,  this  suspicion 
became  chronic  in  China,  soon  after  the  Jesuits  had  established 
themselves  in  the  country.  Sir  George  Staunton,  in  his  history 
of  Earl  Macartney's  Embassy,  refers  to  the  same  suspicion  and 
its  causes.  The  suspicion  in  Newchang  was  but  the  echo 
of  the  louder  and  older  suspicion  in  China  proper.  Ap- 
pearances deepened  the  belief  that  the  missionary  had  some  secret 
design  not  consistent  with  the  peace  or  the  freedom  of  China. 
The  merchant  was  there  avowedly  for  gain.  The  doctor  was 
working  to  make  a  fortune.  The  consul  was  well-paid  for  look- 
ing after  his  countrymen.  But  for  what  was  the  missionary 
there?  The  people  knew  nothing  of  Christianity,  not  even  the 
most  elementary  truths.  It  was  the  general  belief  that  Jesus 
was  the  reigning  sovereign  of  "  foreigndom,"  by  which  generic 
title  Europe  was  known  to  the  Chinese,  who  could  not  differen- 
tiate between  the  various  nationalities.  China  was  the  land  of 
beauty  and  wealth,  and  foreigndom  the  land  of  poverty — for  if 
not,  why  should  foreigners  leave  their  own  land?  Hence  King 
Jesus  sent  an  army  into  China  in  1842,  and  another  in  i860, 
to  take  possession  of  the  land  of  wealth  and  beauty.  The  armies 
were  victorious,  but  were  compelled  to  return  again,  as  there 
was  no  party  of  Chinese  to  welcome  them.  Force  had  twice 
proved  inadequate,  and  therefore  cunning  was  resorted  to. 

These  relations  of  missions  to  politics  arise  not  only  from 
the  actions  of  Western  nations  and  the  ideas  of  Eastern  peoples, 
but  from  the  certain  consequences  of  missionary  activity.  It  is 
a  revolutionary  force  which  missions  carry  into  the  non-Chris- 
tian nations. 

It  is  a  force  which  affects  life.  The  religion  of  which  the 
missionaries  are  the  custodians  and  propagandists,  as  Dr.  Oswald 
Dykes  remarked  at  the  London  Conference  in  1888,  is  "  a 
religion  which  appeals  to  man's  nature  through  all  its  avenues, 
and  which  aims  at  satisfying  all  its  cravings  and  needs."  This 
religion  deals  with  men  in  their  activities  and  relationships. 
Those  who  feel  its  spirit  instantly  become  leaders  in  work  and 


182  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

service.  On  September  i,  1908,  the  Japanese  Government  held 
a  convention  of  native  leaders  in  philanthropic  enterprises,  such 
as  orphanages,  ex-convict  homes,  factory-girls'  homes,  rescue 
homes,  blind  asylums,  and  many  other  institutions  designed  to 
ameliorate  the  condition  of  the  unfortunate  or  the  depraved 
classes  of  society.  There  were  lectures  on  all  kinds  of  social 
subjects.  The  Christians  of  Japan  are  less  than  one  two-hun- 
dredths  of  the  population.  They  were  one-ninth  of  this  con- 
ference. The  Buddhists  outnumber  the  Christians  in  the  Em- 
pire two  hundred  to  one;  in  this  conference  only  five  to  one. 
The  schools  through  which  missions  spread  light  throw  that 
light  into  all  recesses  of  life  and  affect  the  policies  of  nations. 
Modern  Turkey  testifies  to  the  work  of  Robert  College  at  Con- 
stantinople and  the  Syrian  Protestant  College  at  Beirut.  Au- 
thoritative voices  have  recognised  the  effects  of  missions  upon 
Chinese  life  and  policy.  "  The  history  of  modern  education  in 
China,"  says  Dr.  Yen,  Secretary  of  the  Chinese  Legation  in 
Washington,  "  covers  a  period  of  only  a  few  years,  but  the 
system  has  made  wonderful  strides  in  that  period,  and  certainly 
the  work  is  considered  by  our  Government  and  people  alike  as 
the  most  urgent  and  most  important  we  have  on  hand.  .  .  . 
A  large  part  of  the  credit  for  initiating  this  wonderful  educa- 
tional movement  in  our  country  is  due  to  missionary  foresight 
and  enterprise.  They  were  the  earliest  to  realise  the  importance 
of  changing  radically  our  obsolete  system  of  education,  and  to- 
day some  of  the  missionary  colleges  may  easily  be  classed  among 
our  best.  The  splendid  work  they  are  doing  is  appreciated 
and  recognised  by  our  Government  and  people.  ...  To  me 
the  educational  phase  of  the  missionary  labours  seems  the  most 
important  and  most  influential.  Through  the  school  and  college 
the  missionary  comes  in  contact  with  the  upper  and  ruling  classes 
of  our  people,  and  the  influence  he  exercises  over  his  pupils 
in  the  classroom — the  future  leaders  of  the  Empire — will  help 
to  direct  our  future  national  policies." — (The  Inter  collegian, 
February,  1909,  p.  116.)  And  at  a  banquet  in  New  York  to 
the  Imperial  Chinese  Commissioners  who  visited  the  West  in 
1906,  His  Excellency  Tuan  Fang,  recently  viceroy  of  Chih-li, 


MISSIONS  AND  POLITICS  183 

declared :  "  We  take  pleasure  this  evening  in  bearing  testimony 
to  the  part  taken  by  American  missionaries  in  promoting  the 
progress  of  the  Chinese  people.  They  have  borne  the  light  of 
Western  civilisation  into  every  nook  and  corner  of  the  Empire. 
They  have  rendered  inestimable  service  to  China  by  the  la- 
borious task  of  translating  into  the  Chinese  language  religious 
and  scientific  works  of  the  West.  They  help  us  to  bring  happi- 
ness and  comfort  to  the  poor  and  the  suffering  by  the  estab- 
lishment of  hospitals  and  schools.  The  awakening  of  China, 
which  now  seems  to  be  at  hand,  may  be  traced  in  no  small 
measure  to  the  hand  of  the  missionary.  For  this  service  you 
will  find  China  not  ungrateful." — (New  York  Sun,  February  3, 
1906.)  In  India  the  work  of  missions  among  the  low  or  outcaste 
people  is  profoundly  affecting  the  life  and  social  organisation 
of  India.  The  Brahman  commissioner  for  the  state  of  Travan- 
core,  in  the  last  census  but  one,  bore  testimony  to  this  in  a 
state  paper  submitted  to  an  Indian  prince;  and  this  was  nearly 
twenty  years  ago,  before  the  greatest  movements  among  these 
people  had  been  begun  by  Christianity.  "  The  heroism  of  rais- 
ing the  low  from  the  slough  of  debasement,"  said  he,  "  is  an 
element  of  civilisation  unknown  to  ancient  India.  But  for  the 
Christian  missionaries  in  the  country,  these  humble  orders  would 
forever  remain  unraised."  The  highest  educational  officer  in  the 
south  of  India  has  recently  set  forth  the  same  opinion  of  the 
life-moulding  character  of  the  work  done  by  Christianity  in 
the  country.  In  a  report  to  the  Government  he  writes :  "  I 
have  frequently  drawn  attention  to  the  educational  progress  of 
the  native  Christian  community.  If  this  community  pursues 
with  steadiness  the  present  policy  of  its  teachers,  there  can  be 
no  question  that  with  the  immense  advantages  it  possesses  in 
the  way  of  educational  institutions,  in  the  course  of  a  generation 
it  will  have  secured  a  preponderating  position  in  all  the  great 
professions,  and  possibly,  too,  in  the  industrial  enterprises  of 
the  country ;  in  the  latter  because  no  section  of  the  community 
has  entered  on  the  new  departure  in  education  with  greater 
earnestness  than  the  native  Christians." — (Quoted  in  Slater, 
"Missions   and   Sociology,"  pp.  42,   51.)      The  testimony  that 


i84  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

could  be  cited  to  show  the  inevitable  effects  of  Christian  mis- 
sions upon  the  life  of  men,  the  principles  of  society,  and  their 
political  organisation  is  unlimited.  (See  Dennis's  encyclopaedic 
work,  "  Christian  Missions  and  Social  Progress.") 

It  must  suffice  to  add  but  one  other  illustration,  namely,  the 
Sandwich  Islands.  The  Hon.  John  W.  Foster,  formerly  the 
American  Secretary  of  State,  and  a  man  of  extensive  diplomatic 
experience  and  authoritative  knowledge  of  the  Far  East,  has  told 
the  story  in  his  history  of  "  American  Diplomacy  in  the  Orient  " : 

The  first  missionaries  were  kindly  received,  and  hopefully 
entered  upon  their  labours  under  favourable  conditions.  Addi- 
tional missionaries  were  sent  out  from  the  Boston  board,  and 
soon  they  were  actively  at  work  throughout  the  group.  Such 
great  success  attended  their  labours  that  within  a  few  years 
the  larger  part  of  the  population  were  reported  as  adherents 
of  Christianity,  including  the  king  and  the  court.  In  1843,  John 
Quincy  Adams,  then  Chairman  of  the  Committee  on  Foreign 
Affairs  of  the  House,  made  a  report  to  Congress  in  which  he 
spoke  of  this  achievement  as  follows:  "  It  is  a  subject  of  cheer- 
ing contemplation  to  the  friends  of  human  improvement  and 
virtue  that,  by  the  mild  and  gentle  influence  of  Christian  charity, 
dispensed  by  humble  missionaries  of  the  Gospel  unarmed  with 
secular  power  within  the  last  quarter  of  a  century,  the  people 
of  this  group  of  islands  have  been  converted  from  the  lowest 
abasement  of  idolatry  to  the  blessings  of  the  Christian  Gospel ; 
united  under  one  balanced  government;  rallied  to  the  fold  of 
civilisation  by  a  written  language  and  constitution  providing 
security  for  the  rights  of  persons,  property,  and  mind,  and  in- 
vested with  all  the  elements  of  right  and  power  which  can 
entitle  them  to  be  acknowledged  by  their  brethren  of  the  human 
race  as  a  separate  and  independent  community."  The  islands 
were  visited  in  i860  by  the  well-known  American,  Richard  H. 
Dana,  who,  after  spending  some  time  in  investigating  the  work 
of  the  missionaries,  on  his  return  to  the  United  States  published 
an  article  upon  the  subject.  From  his  high  standing  as  a  lawyer, 
and  from  the  fact  that  he  was  not  a  member  of  the  denomina- 
tion which  wrought  this  great  transformation  in  the  population, 
his  statement  carries  great  weight.  The  following  extract  is 
taken  from  his  article :  "  It  is  no  small  thing  to  say  of  the 
missionaries  of  the  American  Board  that  in  less  than  forty 
years  they  have  taught  this  whole  people  to  read  and  to  write, 
to  cipher  and  to  sew.    They  have  given  them  an  alphabet,  gram- 


MISSIONS  AND  POLITICS  185 

mar,  and  dictionary;  preserved  their  language  from  extinction; 
given  it  a  literature,  and  translated  into  it  the  Bible  and  works 
of  devotion,  science,  entertainment,  etc.  They  have  established 
schools,  reared  up  native  teachers,  and  so  pressed  their  work 
that  now  the  proportion  of  inhabitants  who  can  read  and  write 
is  greater  than  in  New  England;  and  whereas  they  found  these 
islands  a  nation  of  half-naked  savages,  living  in  the  surf  and  on 
the  sand,  eating  raw  fish,  fighting  among  themselves,  tyrannised 
over  by  feudal  chiefs,  and  abandoned  to  sensuality,  they  now 
see  them  decently  clothed,  recognising  the  laws  of  marriage, 
knowing  something  of  accounts,  going  to  school  and  public  wor- 
ship with  more  regularity  than  the  people  do  at  home ;  and 
the  more  elevated  of  them  taking  part  in  conducting  the  affairs 
of  the  constitutional  monarchy  under  which  they  live,  holding 
seats  on  the  judicial  bench  and  in  the  legislative  chambers,  and 
filling  posts  in  the  local  magistracies."  The  result  of  this  work 
of  the  missionaries  was  seen  in  the  new  order  of  things  in  society 
and  government.  Regulations  were  decreed  by  which  the  out- 
ward exhibition  of  licentiousness  and  intemperance  was  sought 
to  be  restrained,  crime  and  disorder  punished,  and  the  civil  rights 
of  the  people  enforced  by  judicial  process.  The  government, 
which  had  before  been  a  despotic  autocracy,  assumed  a  con- 
stitutional form,  and  the  kmg  was  aided  by  an  organised  body 
of  advisers,  and  later  by  a  legislative  assembly.  The  political 
reorganisation  was  almost  entirely  the  work  of  the  missionaries. 
They  were  not  always  free  from  mistakes  in  government,  but 
they  always  studied  the  good  of  the  people  and  the  best  interests 
of  the  king.  Much  diversity  of  sentiment  has  been  expressed 
by  writers  upon  the  effects  of  the  labors  of  the  Christian  mission- 
aries in  the  Orient,  but  the  better  judgment  of  candid  observers 
is  in  favour  of  their  beneficial  influence  on  the  rulers  and  the 
people,  even  aside  from  the  religious  considerations  involved. — 
(Foster,  "American  Diplomacy  in  the  Orient,"  p.  106  ff.) 

Hawaii  presents  an  exceptional  situation,  for  there  missions 
became  naturalised  as  well  as  the  Church,  and  the  missionaries 
and  their  families  became  a  really  corporate  part  of  the  new 
life  which  Christianity  organised.  But  even  when  missions  have 
preserved  their  distinctively  religious  character  and  remained 
foreign  missions,  they  have  affected  political  life,  that  is,  the 
life  of  men  organised  in  the  state  and  in  local  government.  They 
have  done  so  in  the  deepest,  most  penetrating,  and  pervasive 
way  by  planting  in  men  a  new  principle  of  action  and  relation- 


1 86  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

ship  and  new  ideals  of  personal  and  national  duty.  This  was 
the  effect  of  the  first  preaching  of  Christianity.  It  struck 
straight  at  the  ethical  principles  and  relationships  of  men. 
"  Moral  regeneration  and  the  moral  life  were  not  merely  one 
side  of  Christianity  to  Paul,"  says  Harnack  in  the  second  edi- 
tion of  "  The  Mission  and  Expansion  of  Christianity,"  "  but  its 
very  fruit  and  goal  on  earth.  The  entire  labour  of  the  Christian 
mission  might  be  described  as  a  moral  enterprise,  or  the  awaken- 
ing and  strengthening  of  the  moral  sense.  Such  a  description 
would  not  be  inadequate  to  its  full  contents."  Yes,  provided 
"  moral  "  is  understood  in  a  sufficiently  full  sense.  Christianity 
operated  at  once  on  the  individual  and  corporate  life.  It  does 
so  still.  It  penetrates  to  the  roots  of  motives,  and  by  relating 
men  anew  to  God,  relates  them  anew  to  their  fellow-men.  The 
new  Christian  Churches  are  themselves  schools  of  order  and 
freedom,  of  loyalty,  but  also  of  democracy,  and  the  missionary 
as  he  goes  to  and  fro  is  alike  the  reminder  and  the  hope  of  a 
free  and  serving  society.  No  other  force  operates  as  deeply  and 
as  transformingly  as  his.  A  traveller  in  Western  Asia,  William 
E.  Baxter,  M.P.,  testifies  to  what  he  heard  on  the  ground  in 
Egypt  and  Turkey.  "  I  found  that  men  of  all  nationalities  and 
creeds  emphatically  and  unanimously  gave  evidence  that  the  col- 
leges, schools,  churches,  and  other  institutions,  conducted  with 
most  conspicuous  ability,  with  a  remarkable  freedom  from  all 
sectarian  or  religious  narrowness,  by  American  missionaries, 
were  doing  more  for  the  civilisation  and  education  of  the  ignorant 
masses  of  the  East  than  any  other  agency  whatever." — (Barton, 
"The  Missionary  and  His  Critics,"  p.  64.)  And  abundant 
testimony  is  at  hand  from  those  who  have  themselves  been 
identified  with  the  other  agencies  by  which  the  West  is  trans- 
forming the  East.  The  words  of  Sir  W.  Mackworth  Young, 
K. C.S.I. ,  Lieutenant-Governor  of  the  Punjab,  will  suffice.  Speak- 
ing at  St.  Michaels,  Cornhill,  on  March  4,  1902,  he  said: 

As  a  business  man  speaking  to  business  men  I  am  prepared 
to  say  that  the  work  which  has  been  done  by  missionary  agency 
in  India  exceeds  in  importance  all  that  has  been  done  (and  much 
has  been  done)   by  the  British  Government  in  India  since  its 


MISSIONS  AND  POLITICS  187 

commencement.  Let  me  take  the  Province  which  I  know  best. 
I  ask  myself  what  has  been  the  most  potent  influence  which 
has  been  working  among  the  people  since  annexation  fifty-four 
years  ago,  and  to  that  question  I  feel  there  is  but  one  answer — 
Christianity,  as  set  forth  in  the  lives  and  teaching  of  Christian 
missionaries.  I  do  not  underestimate  the  forces  which  have 
been  brought  to  bear  on  the  races  in  the  Punjab  by  our  beneficent 
rule,  by  British  justice  and  enlightenment;  but  I  am  convinced 
that  the  effect  on  native  character  produced  by  the  self-denying 
labours  of  missionaries  is  far  greater.  The  Punjab  bears  on 
its  historical  roll  the  names  of  many  Christian  statesmen  who 
have  honoured  God  by  their  lives  and  endeared  themselves  to 
the  people  by  their  faithful  work;  but  I  venture  to  say  that 
if  they  could  speak  to  us  from  the  great  unseen,  there  is  not 
one  of  them  who  would  not  proclaim  that  the  work  done  by 
men  like  French,  Clark,  Newton,  and  Forman,  who  went  in 
and  out  among  the  people  for  a  whole  generation  or  more,  and 
who  preached  by  their  lives  the  nobility  of  self-sacrifice,  and 
the  lesson  of  love  to  God  and  man,  is  a  higher  and  nobler  work, 
and  more  far-reaching  in  its  consequences. 

Christianity,  it  must  be  said  again,  is  bound  to  wield  such 
influences  as  these.  The  true  corporate  life  of  man  has  to 
stand  on  religious  sanctions,  and  Christianity  inevitably  offers 
itself  as  providing  these  sanctions,  and  the  dissolution  of  the 
ancient  sanctions  of  Asia  by  civilisation,  as  well  as  by  Chris- 
tianity, creates  a  necessity  which  no  power  can  prevent  Chris- 
tianity from  offering  itself  to  supply.  Capable  men  in  Asia 
see  this.  "  I  firmly  believe,"  said  Baron  Mayajima,  a  former 
member  of  the  Japanese  cabinet,  "  we  must  have  religion  as 
the  basis  of  our  national  and  personal  welfare.  No  matter  how 
large  an  army  or  navy  we  may  have,  unless  we  have  righteous- 
ness as  the  foundation  of  our  national  existence,  we  shall  fall 
short  of  the  highest  success.  I  do  not  hesitate  to  say  that  we 
must  have  religion  for  our  highest  welfare.  And  when  I  look 
about  me  to  see  what  religion  we  may  best  rely  upon,  I  am 
convinced  that  the  religion  of  Christ  is  the  one  most  full  of 
strength  and  promise  for  the  nation." 

Christianity  is  bound  to  offer  itself  to  such  needs,  and  in 
doing  so  and  in  affecting  life,  it  is  certain  to  work  with  up- 


188  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

heaving  and  revolutionary  effects.  It  is  a  principle  of  life  and 
therefore  its  natural  utterance  is  by  orderly  development;  but 
when  opposed,  its  inalienable  nature  is  to  gather  strength  and 
to  burst  through  at  last.  The  Taiping  rebellion  shows  what  a 
terrible  distortion  can  be  given  to  the  power  which  is  in  Chris- 
tianity. The  whole  history  of  the  world  reveals  what  collisions 
are  certain  when  its  truth  in  its  purity  and  in  the  partial  forms 
in  which  we  cast  it,  seeks  a  home  for  itself  in  life.  Mr.  Foster 
refers  to  this  in  his  discussion  of  troubles  in  China.  "  The 
teaching  of  Christianity,"  he  says,  "  tended  to  the  introduction 
of  ideas  hostile  to  the  existing  governmental  order  and  struck 
at  ancestor  worship.  The  missionaries  opposed  such  native  cus- 
toms as  slavery,  concubinage,  support  of  heathen  festivals,  and 
foot-binding.  In  fact,  in  China  as  elsewhere,  and  in  all  ages, 
the  influence  of  Christianity  was  revolutionary.  Its  founder 
declared  that  He  came  '  not  to  send  peace  but  a  sword.'  Paul, 
the  first  missionary,  when  he  declared  '  the  Gospel  is  the  power 
of  God,'  used  the  Greek  word  which  has  been  anglicised  to 
designate  the  most  powerful  of  all  modern  explosives — dynamite. 
If  the  introduction  of  Christianity  into  the  little  island  of  Britain 
was  attended  with  bloodshed  and  disorder  for  four  hundred 
years,  it  should  not  be  regarded  as  strange  that  in  the  mighty 
Empire  of  the  East  its  propagation  has  been  marked  by  civil 
commotion." — (Foster,  "American  Diplomacy  in  the  Orient," 

P-  4H-) 

Even  now  we  have  not  exhausted  the  sources  of  the  political 
entanglement  of  the  missionary  enterprise.  The  movement  in 
the  past  has  not  been  able  to  keep  itself  free  from  actual  political 
service.  Its  religious  principle  has  produced  political  results,  bu' 
also  its  agents  have  engaged  in  unmistakable  political  activity. 
They  have  sought  to  determine  the  political  destinies  of  lands  and 
peoples.  One  of  the  many  notable  instances  was  John  Mackenzie 
of  South  Africa,  who  toiled  in  the  interest  of  the  native  peoples 
and  of  the  cause  of  civilisation,  to  secure  what  he  believed  was 
the  best  sovereignty  for  large  areas  of  southern  Africa.  He  not 
only  wrought  at  home  in  England  to  this  end,  but  returned  to 
Africa    with    a   civil    appointment    as    administrator.      His    son 


MISSIONS  AND  POLITICS  189 

draws  a  picture  of  his  political  activity  at  home  and  quotes  the 
judgment  of  Mr.  W.  T.  Stead: 

There  seemed  to  be  no  limit  to  his  activity.  He  interviewed 
cabinet  Ministers,  he  buttonholed  editors,  he  haunted  the  lobby 
of  the  House  of  Commons.  He  saw  every  one  who  had  any 
influence  in  the  matter,  and  compassed  sea  and  land  if  by  any 
means  he  might  make  one  proselyte.  When  the  Transvaal  dele- 
gates came,  they  imagined  that  they  had  only  to  come  and  see, 
and  conquer.  If  they  had  come  nine  months  earlier  their  antici- 
pations might  have  been  fulfilled.  When  they  arrived,  however, 
it  was  too  late.  Mr.  Mackenzie  had  been  beforehand  with  them, 
and  to  their  unconcealed  chagrin,  they  found  that  the  public 
would  not  tolerate  their  attempt  to  erect  a  Boer  barrier  across 
the  great  trade  route  from  the  Cape  to  Central  Africa.  Bechu- 
analand  was  saved,  and  much  more  than  Bechuanaland.  .  .  . 
Mr.  Mackenzie  secured  the  favourable  verdict  of  the  Govern- 
ment and  of  public  opinion,  not  merely  for  the  administration 
of  Bechuanaland,  but  for  the  adoption  of  that  far-reaching  native 
policy  which  he  has  labelled  the  territorial  system.  .  .  .  With- 
out forgetting  for  a  moment  the  old  warning  against  boasting 
when  donning  our  armour,  we  may  safely  say  that  we  bid  Mr. 
Mackenzie  God-speed,  with  every  confidence  that  hereafter  he 
will  live  in  the  annals  of  our  empire  as  the  man  who,  at  a  grave 
crisis,  saved  Africa  for  England. — (Mackenzie,  "  Mackenzie  of 
South  Africa,"  p.  310.) 

At  the  Brussels  Conference,  in  1889-90,  missionaries  were 
among  the  active  agitators  in  behalf  of  the  limitation  of  the 
liquor  traffic  in  Africa  and  in  the  fight  against  the  slave  trade 
and  the  importation  of  firearms  and  intoxicants  into  the  South 
Sea  Islands,  and  in  the  modern  war  against  the  opium  traffic, 
they  have  been  the  leaders.  David  Livingstone's  name  will  ever 
stand  first  among  those  who  wrought  for  the  social  and  political 
redemption  of  Africa.  John  G.  Paton,  who  eschewed  all  political 
confusion  of  his  mission,  was  the  leading  spirit  in  protecting 
the  savage  people  of  the  Pacific.  And  Bishop  Brent,  a  mis- 
sionary in  the  Philippines,  was  Chairman  of  the  International 
Conference  on  the  opium  traffic  held  in  Shanghai,  February, 
1909. 

Oftentimes  political  service  has  been  imposed  upon  mission- 


igo  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

aries  by  their  home  governments,  in  circumstances  where  their 
governments  would  have  been  impotent  without  them,  and 
where  it  would  have  been  a  disloyalty  to  civilisation  and  to 
humanity  for  them  to  refuse  their  aid.  Caleb  Cushing,  later 
Attorney-General  of  the  United  States,  who  was  sent  to  China 
in  1844,  has  put  on  record  his  estimate  of  the  services  of  Ameri- 
can missionaries  to  the  representatives  of  the  United  States  in 
the  negotiation  with  China  of  the  first  treaties: 

In  the  late  negotiations  with  China,  the  most  important,  not 
to  say  indispensable  service,  was  derived  from  American  mis- 
sionaries, and  more  especially  from  Dr.  Bridgman  and  Dr. 
Parker.  They  possessed  the  rare  qualification  of  understanding 
the  Chinese  language,  which  enabled  them  to  act  as  interpreters 
to  the  legation ;  their  intimate  knowledge  of  China  and  the 
Chinese  made  them  invaluable  as  advisers,  and  their  high  char- 
acter contributed  to  give  weight  and  moral  strength  to  the  mis- 
sion, and  while  their  co-operation  with  me  was  thus  of  eminent 
utility  to  the  United  States,  it  will  prove,  I  trust,  not  less  useful 
to  the  general  cause  of  humanity  and  of  religion  in  the  East. 
But  the  particular  service  rendered  by  the  American  missionaries 
in  this  case  is  but  one  of  a  great  class  of  facts  appertaining  to 
the  whole  body  of  Christian  missionaries  in  China.  In  the  first 
place,  other  legations  to  China  have  been  equally  dependent  on 
the  Christian  missionaries  for  the  means  of  intercourse  with  the 
Chinese  government,  of  which  well-known  examples  occur  in 
the  history  of  the  successive  British  embassies  of  Lord  Macart- 
ney, Lord  Amherst,  and  Sir  Henry  Pottinger.  In  the  second 
place,  the  great  bulk  of  the  general  information  we  possess  in 
regard  to  China,  and  nearly  the  whole  of  the  primary  philological 
information  concerning  the  two  great  languages  of  the  Chinese 
empire,  namely,  the  Chinese  and  the  Manchu,  are  derived  through 
the  missionaries,  both  Catholic  and  Protestant.  (Here  follows 
a  long  list  of  philological  works,  prepared  by  different  mission- 
aries.) In  thus  briefly  answering  your  enquiry  on  a  single  point 
in  the  history  of  Christian  missions,  namely,  their  incidental 
usefulness,  permit  me  to  add  that,  eminently  great  as  this  their 
incidental  utility  has  been,  it  is  but  a  small  point,  comparatively, 
among  the  great  and  good  deeds  of  the  religious  missionaries 
in  the  East.  There  is  not  a  nobler  nor  a  more  deeply  interesting 
chapter  than  this  in  the  history  of  human  courage,  intellect,  self- 
sacrifice,  greatness,  and  virtue;  and  it  remains  yet  to  be  written 


MISSIONS  AND  POLITICS  191 

in  a  manner  worthy  of  the  dignity  of  the  subject,  and  of  its 
relations  to  civilisation  and  government,  as  well  as  to  the  Chris- 
tian Church. —  (Bridgman,  "The  Missionary  Pioneer,"  pp.  132- 

134.) 

Mr.  Foster  has  borne  striking  testimony  to  the  services  ren- 
dered later  to  America  and  the  world,  most  of  all  the  Empire  of 
Japan,  by  S.  Wells  Williams,  a  missionary  of  the  American 
Board  of  Commissioners  for  Foreign  Missions : 

One  of  the  best  known  of  Americans  in  China  was  Dr.  S. 
Wells  Williams.  He  mastered  that  most  difficult  language,  and 
came  to  be  recognised  as  the  first  scholar  and  linguist  of  all 
the  foreign  residents.  When  our  Government  determined  to 
force  an  entrance  into  Japan,  which  had  been  hermetically  closed 
against  all  foreigners  for  centuries,  Commodore  Perry  was  des- 
patched with  a  formidable  fleet,  and  both  America  and  Europe 
were  laid  under  tribute  to  furnish  men  of  learning  and  fitness 
to  make  the  expedition  a  success.  But  before  Commodore  Perry 
could  venture  on  the  first  diplomatic  step  in  his  work,  he  had 
to  repair  with  his  fleet  to  Canton  to  take  on  board  Dr.  Williams 
as  his  interpreter  and  adviser ;  and  the  narrative  which  the  Com- 
modore has  left  of  his  expedition  shows  that  in  securing  inter- 
course with  the  authorities  and  in  the  details  of  treaty  negotia- 
tions, Dr.  Williams  was  his  main  support,  and  to  him,  more 
than  to  any  other  person,  was  the  Commodore  indebted  for  the 
complete  success  of  his  expedition,  which  has  brought  so  much 
fame  to  American  diplomacy  and  which  has  given  to  the  United 
States  such  prominence  in  the  affairs  of  the  Far  East. 

When  the  allied  British  and  French  fleets  went  to  Tientsin 
in  1858  to  exact  treaties  from  China,  the  American  Minister 
took  with  him  Dr.  Williams  as  his  counsellor  and  interpreter, 
and  he  played  a  very  important  part  in  those  negotiations.  The 
Minister  reported  to  his  Government :  "  I  could  not  but  for  this 
aid  have  advanced  a  step  in  discharge  of  my  duties."  Years 
afterwards,  when  Dr.  Williams  was  leaving  China  to  return 
to  America  to  spend  the  evening  of  his  life,  the  Secretary  of 
State,  Mr.  Fish,  wrote  him :  "  Above  all,  the  Christian  world 
will  not  forget  that  to  you  more  than  to  any  other  man  is  due 
the  insertion  in  our  treaty  with  China  of  the  liberal  provision 
for  the  toleration  of  the  Christian  religion."  For  many  years 
after  that  event  the  Doctor  continued  as  the  trusted  adviser  of 
our  Government  in  all  Chinese  questions.     He  left  as  a  monu- 


192  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

ment  to  his  industry  and  learning  the  Chinese  Dictionary,  and 
he  gave  to  the  world  in  his  "  Middle  Kingdom  "  the  most  com- 
plete work  on  China,  which  is  to  this  day  the  standard  authority 
on  that  country. 

Another  person  took  a  prominent  part  as  the  associate  of 
Dr.  Williams  in  the  Tientsin  expedition  and  negotiations  of 
1858 — Dr.  W.  A.  P.  Martin,  who  went  to  that  country  as  a 
missionary  of  the  Presbyterian  Church  of  the  United  States.  He 
became  proficient  in  the  Chinese  language  and  literature,  and 
was  called  into  the  service  of  the  Imperial  Government.  For 
thirty  years  he  held  the  post  of  the  head  of  the  Chinese  educa- 
tional system  in  the  foreign  course  of  study,  and  has  acted  as 
an  adviser  to  its  Foreign  Office  in  international  affairs.  He  has 
translated  into  Chinese  our  own  standard  author  on  international 
law,  Wheaton,  and  other  Western  publicists.  He  has  been  of 
inestimable  service  to  the  Imperial  Government,  and  has  been 
characterised  by  Minister  Denby  as  "  the  foremost  American  in 
China." 

Such  are  some  of  the  services  which  Christian  missionaries 
have  rendered  to  the  Western  nations  and  to  China  in  their 
political  and  diplomatic  relations.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say 
that  up  to  the  middle  of  the  last  century  the  governments  of 
Europe  and  America  were  almost  entirely  dependent  upon  the 
missionaries  for  the  direct  conduct  of  their  intercourse  with 
Chinese  officials. — (Foster,  "  The  Relation  of  Diplomacy  to  For- 
eign Missions,"  pp.  13-15.) 

This  demand  for  diplomatic  service  did  not  come  from  the 
Western  nations  only.  Japan  besought  the  assistance  of  Ver- 
beck,  and  when  the  United  States  Government's  treaty  with 
Siam  was  negotiated  in  1856,  Dr.  Wood  of  the  Embassy,  wrote 
that  "  the  unselfish  kindness  of  the  American  missionaries,  their 
patience,  sincerity,  and  faithfulness,  have  won  the  confidence 
and  esteem  of  the  natives,  and  in  some  degree  transferred  those 
sentiments  to  the  nation  represented  by  the  missionary  and  pre- 
pared the  way  for  the  free  and  national  intercourse  now  com- 
mencing. It  was  very  evident  that  much  of  the  apprehension 
they  felt  in  taking  upon  themselves  the  responsibilities  of  a 
treaty  with  us  would  be  diminished  if  they  could  have  the  Rev. 
Mr.  Mattoon  as  the  first  United  States  Consul  to  set  the  treaty 
in  motion."      In    1871,   the   Regent  of   Siam   frankly   told   Mr. 


MISSIONS  AND  POLITICS  193 

Seward,  the  United  States  Consul-General  at  Shanghai,  "  Siam 
has  not  been  disciplined  by  English  and  French  guns  as  China 
has,  but  the  country  has  been  opened  by  missionaries."  The 
great  districts  of  Uganda  and  Nyassa  in  Africa  were  practically 
secured  to  Great  Britain  by  the  missionaries  of  the  Church  of 
England  and  the  Scotch  Presbyterians.  When  the  East  Africa 
Company  was  on  the  point  of  giving  up  Uganda,  which  would  prob- 
ably have  involved  its  loss  to  Great  Britain,  the  Church  Missionary 
Society  raised  £15,000  of  the  £40,000  needed  to  maintain  the  Com- 
pany's hold  for  one  year  until  the  British  Government  could  be 
induced  to  take  it  over.  Of  the  work  of  the  Scotch  Presbyterians 
in  Nyassaland,  Joseph  Thomson,  the  traveller,  bears  testimony 
after  his  visit  in  1879.  "  Where  international  effort  has  failed," 
he  said,  "  an  unassuming  mission,  supported  only  by  a  small 
section  of  the  British  people,  has  been  quietly  and  unostenta- 
tiously, but  most  successfully  realising  in  its  own  district  the 
entire  programme  of  the  Brussels  Conference.  I  refer  to  the 
Livingstonia  Mission  of  the  Free  Church  of  Scotland.  This 
mission  has  proved  itself,  in  every  sense  of  the  word,  a  civilising 
centre.  By  it  slavery  has  been  stopped,  desolating  wars  put  an 
end  to,  and  peace  and  security  given  to  a  wide  area  of  the 
country."  The  Church  of  Scotland  mission  at  Blantyre  has 
rendered  similar  service. 

The  considerations  which  we  have  now  reviewed  bring  clearly 
before  us  the  entanglement  of  missions  and  politics,  and  raise 
some  vital  questions.  Is  this  entanglement  consistent  with  the 
aim  of  the  missionary  movement?  Does  it  make  Christ  known 
or  obscure  Him?  Is  it  helpful  to  the  effort  to  make  men  His 
true  disciples  and  to  domesticate  the  Christian  Church  as  a 
spiritual  force  in  non-Christian  lands?  Is  such  an  entangle- 
ment unavoidable?  If  it  is,  are  any  of  its  results  evil?  If 
they  are,  how  can  they  be  limited  in  their  operation?  To  put 
the  questions  more  concretely,  should  Christians  seek  to  preach 
only  what  will  not  create  disturbance  or  upheaval,  heeding  the 
counsel  of  an  article  in  The  Empire  Review  some  years  ago  on 
"  The  State  and  Christian  Missions,"  in  which  missionaries 
were  wisely  warned  against  the  assumption  that  they  are  justi- 


194  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

fied  in  preaching  new  and  unfamiliar  truths  at  all  times  and 
among  all  people,  without  regard  to  consequences,  and  against 
ignoring  the  sense  of  historical  perspective  or  the  law  of  accom- 
modation to  things  as  they  are  ?  This  is  "  to  forget  the  example  of 
Christ  and  to  set  the  character  of  His  missionaries  in  a  light 
in  which  it  will  neither  deserve  nor  command  the  respect  of 
mankind."  More  concretely  still,  are  the  missionaries  to  try 
to  convert  Mohammedans?  If  they  do  this  in  Mohammedan 
lands  they  will  create  more  disturbance  than  they  will  by  preach- 
ing new  and  unfamiliar  truth  in  Japan?  And  even  if  they 
convert  high-caste  Hindus  in  mission  schools  in  India,  there  will 
be  trouble.  Should  missionaries  avoid  this?  Shall  they  ever 
apply  Christianity  to  life  or  merely  preach  it  as  a  personal 
philosophy  or  theory  of  things  as  they  ought  to  be,  not  to  be 
pressed  too  far  to  the  disturbance  of  things  as  they  are?  Shall 
they  avoid  all  collision  with  native  customs  and  accept  in  silence 
all  wrongs  which  they  behold,  including  the  wrongs  done  in  the 
name  of  Christ  or  in  the  name  of  institutions  which  compromise 
Him?  Shall  they  refrain  from  all  political  service  of  any  sort 
whatever,  refusing  to  give  help  of  any  kind  to  governments  of 
either  East  or  West?  Shall  they  divorce  missions  absolutely 
from  politics;  that  is,  from  the  organised  civil  life  of  man, 
and  obey  the  law  of  accommodation  to  things  as  they  are? 
Doing  otherwise,  will  they  be  forgetting  the  example  of  Christ 
and  the  true  character  of  Christianity? 

Ask  the  men  who  ruled  the  Jewish  nation  in  the  day  of 
Christ  how  they  regarded  Him  and  His  doctrine,  that  fearless 
Teacher  and  that  piercing  message  which,  as  they  clearly  saw, 
imperilled  all  their  ideals  for  the  nation.  Ask  the  Roman  Em- 
perors who  saw  in  the  new  faith  an  imperial  power  which  doomed 
the  ancient  order  and  which  in  due  time  revolutionised  the 
state.  Christianity  was  not,  and  was  never  meant  to  be,  a  nullity, 
a  reaffirmation  of  existing  orders.  It  turned  the  world  upside 
down,  and  is  needed  for  the  same  upheaving  transformation 
of  life  to-day.  The  missionary  cannot  be  faithful  to  his  aim 
without  producing  results.  The  very  troubles  which  sometimes 
follow  are  a  proof  that  he  has  earnestly  sought  to  attain  his 


MISSIONS  AND  POLITICS  195 

aim  and  that  the  aim  was  good.  If  no  trouble  followed,  it 
would  be  a  proof  that  the  man  and  his  mission  were  innocuous 
and  unnecessary.  "  So  far  from  the  troubles  in  China  being 
an  argument  against  missions,  they  are  distinctly  an  argument 
for  them,"  says  the  Shanghai  Mercury  (August  6,  1900),  which 
is  hot  a  missionary  organ ;  "  and,"  it  adds,  "  an  overwhelm- 
ingly powerful  argument.  The  evils  which  flourish  so  abun- 
dantly among  the  Chinese  people,  and  which  give  opportunity 
to  the  designing,  unscrupulous,  and  greedy  mandarins,  are  evils 
which  nothing  can  effectively  cure  in  the  absence  of  the  Chris- 
tian motive  and  the  Christian  ethic." 

There  is  a  confusion  of  missions  with  politics  that  is  dis- 
astrous. The  very  relationship  between  the  two,  which  we  have 
seen  to  be  inevitable,  is  freighted  with  intricate  problems.  But 
all  those  relationships  which  are  demanded  or  allowed  by  the 
missionary  aim  will  work  out  good,  and  the  perplexities  which 
they  involve  are  the  unavoidable  perplexities  of  life  and  progress, 
perplexities  which  are  less  and  less  perilous  than  the  opiate 
issues  of  a  stagnant  and  undisturbed  order.  The  practical  ques- 
tions which  we  face  are  questions  not  of  principle,  but  of 
method,  of  judgment  in  the  application  of  principle.  In  all 
such  questions  men  may  err.  Often  we  only  know  by  the  far-off 
result  whether  the  judgment  was  right  or  not.  But  the  best 
that  we  can  do  is  simply  to  do  the  best  that  we  can.  And  men 
have  never  gone  far  astray  who  realised  what  the  missionary 
aim  was,  and  who,  walking  with  Christ,  determined  in  the  guid- 
ing light  of  His  countenance  what  it  was  for  which  that  aim 
called. 

We  are  told,  however,  that  the  relation  of  missions  to  politics 
is  a  question  not  of  judgment  in  the  application  of  a  principle 
to  conditions,  but  of  principle  itself.  The  missionary  movement, 
it  is  said,  has  no  civil  standing.  The  missionary  is  a  self- 
expatriated  man,  the  character  of  whose  errand  has  deprived 
him  of  political  rights.  His  mission  is  an  intrusion  and  an 
impertinence.  All  other  forms  of  national  intercourse  are  legiti- 
mate, even  the  trade  in  opium  with  China  and  in  dressed  pork 
with   Turkey,   and   in    Russian   brandy   and    French    wine   with 


i96  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

Persia.  It  is  right  to  fight  for  the  extension  or  preservation 
of  such  trade  and  to  instruct  consular  agents  to  investigate 
the  probable  markets  for  beer,  for  patent  alcoholic  medicines, 
for  any  reputable  article  of  commerce.  Western  brothels  and 
saloons  are  entitled  to  protection,  and  the  commercial  pirate 
must  be  backed  against  the  heathen,  and  the  judge  advocate 
who  thinks  otherwise  must  be  replaced  with  a  man  of  under- 
standing. This  is  the  baser  form  of  the  still  too  common  opinion. 
Others  say  that  the  missionaries  cannot  carry  on  their  work 
without  disturbance,  that  this  disturbance  involves  their  Gov- 
ernment, and  that  neither  the  character  nor  the  results  of  the 
work  warrant  the  trouble  to  which  the  Government  is  put.  The 
Hon.  John  Sherman,  when  Chairman  of  the  Senate  Committee 
on  Foreign  Affairs,  put  this  view  quite  bluntly  in  a  letter  to 
Professor  A.  D.  G.  Hamlin :  "  I  sympathise  with  you  entirely 
in  your  view  of  Turkey,"  he  wrote,  "  and  its  atrocious  persecu- 
tion of  Christians,  and  would  be  glad  to  provide  some  suitable 
remedy;  but  what  can  we  do?  If  our  citizens  go  to  a  far 
distant  country,  semi-civilised  and  bitterly  opposed  to  their 
movements,  we  cannot  follow  them  there  and  protect  them." 
—  (New  York  Independent,  April  30,  1896.)  Others  who  recog- 
nise that  a  nation  must  care  for  its  citizens  think  that  the  move- 
ments of  the  missionaries  should  be  politically  limited.  A  Lon- 
don newspaper  set  forth  a  simple  plan  of  this  sort  at  the  time 
of  the  Boxer  troubles.  "  Since  there  is  no  prospect  of  altering 
the  mass  of  Chinese  life,  which  has  varied  little,  if  at  all,  since 
a  time  in  which  Christianity  only  existed  as  implied  in  the 
prophecies,  would  it  not  be  better  to  stop  the  missionary  enter- 
prise altogether?"  This  was  the  way  this  forgotten  writer  of 
a  day  put  his  question  about  a  movement  which  all  the  nations 
of  the  earth  cannot  stop.  "  It  would  be  easy  to  do  so,"  he 
flowed  on,  "  if  the  Powers  would  only  agree.  We  allow,  of 
course,  that  it  would  be  difficult  to  get  them  to  combine  for 
the  purpose,  but  if  any  good  is  to  be  done  a  public  opinion  must 
be  formed,  and  one  can  only  try.  As  for  the  method,  it  is 
easily  defined.  If  it  were  settled,  as  it  easily  might  be,  by  treaty, 
that  no  European  was  allowed  to  enter  China  without  a  pass- 


MISSIONS  AND  POLITICS  197 

port,  and  that  none  should  be  issued  except  to  those  who  gave 
guarantees  that  they  were  engaged  in  commercial  or  industrial 
business  only,  the  trouble  would  cease  at  once.  If  any  mission- 
ary were  to  persist  in  going  up  country,  the  Chinese  authorities 
would  be  entitled  to  arrest  him  and  bring  him  back  to  the  nearest 
treaty  port." — (St.  James  Gazette,  September  13,  1900.) 

Still  others  who  think  that  the  missionary  has  a  right  to 
propagate  his  religion  all  over  the  world  believe  that  he  should 
not  appeal  to  what  Dr.  Cust  loved  to  call  "  the  arm  of  the  flesh," 
or  ever  enjoy  the  physical  protection  of  his  Government.  This 
view  was  set  forth  in  the  resolution  of  the  Universal  Peace 
Congress  in  Glasgow  in  1902.  One  of  the  commissions  pre- 
sented the  following  proposal  adopted  for  submission  to  the 
congress : 

I. — Considering  that  even  if  every  man  has  the  right  to  en- 
deavour to  induce  his  fellow-men  to  share  his  convictions,  he 
who  undertakes  such  a  task  must  expect  opposition,  and  must 
expect  resistance  to  be  particularly  active  when,  as  in  the  case 
of  the  missionaries,  he  undertakes  to  inculcate  in  races  belonging 
to  civilisations  very  different  from  his  own,  ideas  and  convictions 
in  absolute  opposition  to  theirs ;  considering  that  the  missionaries 
face  these  dangers  with  a  perfect  knowledge  of  all  that  is  in- 
volved, and  that  they  ought  to  consider  the  opportunity  of  suffer- 
ing for  their  faith  as  among  the  most  glorious  of  their  rewards ; 
considering  that  even  though  homage  may  be  rendered  to  the 
courage  and  sincerity  of  these  men,  it  can  nevertheless  not  be 
admitted  that  the  propaganda  of  their  religious  ideas  should  have, 
even  as  its  indirect  consequence,  the  exposure  of  their  country 
to  the  evils  of  war,  and  the  endangering  of  the  life  of  thousands 
of  their  compatriots  who  do  not  perhaps  share  their  convictions, 
and  are  not  disposed  to  make  the  same  sacrifices ;  considering 
that  even  if  the  civilised  nations  are  under  obligation  to  protect 
such  of  their  subjects  as  may  reside  in  a  foreign  land,  it  is  only 
that  they  themselves  abstain  from  offending  the  prejudices,  or 
attacking  the  convictions  of  the  peoples  whose  hospitality  they 
receive ;  considering  that  it  is  the  duty  of  missionaries  to  abstain 
from  all  intemperate  zeal,  and  on  the  contrary  to  exercise  the 
tact,  prudence,  and  moderation  which  would  be  suggested  to  them 
both  by  the  precepts  of  their  religion  and  the  care  for  their 
personal  interest; 


i98  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

The  Congress  is  of  opinion  that  the  Powers  should  rigorously 
abstain  from  all  armed  intervention  intended  to  protect,  succour 
or  avenge  the  missionaries  of  their  nationality  who  have  volun- 
tarily exposed  themselves  to  the  hostility  or  the  resentment  of 
peoples  of  an  absolutely  different  civilisation. 

II. — Considering  that  in  certain  countries,  and  notably  in  the 
Far  East,  some  subjects  of  the  non-Christian  Powers  who  join 
one  of  the  Christian  Churches  take  advantage  thereof  to  claim 
the  position  of  diplomatic  protection  from  one  of  the  nations 
holding  the  Christian  Faith,  and  thus  to  escape  the  authority 
of  their  own  Government; 

Considering  that  the  Christian  nations  cannot  admit  these 
claims  without  injuring  the  sovereign  rights  which  even  non- 
Christian  Powers  have  incontestably  over  their  own  subjects, 
of  whatever  religion  they  may  be,  and  without,  as  a  consequence, 
exposing  themselves  to  the  danger  of  exciting  the  legitimate 
susceptibilities  of  these  Powers ; 

The  Congress  is  of  opinion  that  the  Christian  nations  should 
strictly  abstain  from  claiming,  or  even  admitting,  their  diplomatic 
protection  of  the  subjects  of  the  non-Christian  Powers  who  may 
have  joined  either  of  the  Christian  Churches. 

On  the  basis  of  this  proposal,  the  following  resolution  was 
adopted : 

The  Congress,  recognising  that  it  is  the  duty  of  every  country 
to  protect  its  own  citizens  who  reside  abroad,  and  also  citizens 
of  other  countries  residing  within  its  borders,  while  they  respect 
the  law; 

Recognising  also  that  homage  should  be  rendered  to  the 
courage  and  sincerity  of  missionaries  who  sacrifice  comfort,  and 
sometimes  life,  for  the  promotion  of  their  faith ;  and  that  every 
man  has  the  right  to  endeavour  to  induce  others  to  share  his 
convictions  ; 

The  Congress  nevertheless  earnestly  recommends  that  mis- 
sionaries should  rigorously  abstain  from  all  action  which  can 
even  indirectly  expose  their  country  to  war;  should  refrain  from 
appealing  to  their  governments  to  avenge  their  wrongs ;  and 
should  rely  on  the  well-recognised  power  of  disinterested  effort, 
and  not  upon  military  force,  which  must  always  be  a  hindrance 
to  their  service. 

Very  true,  but  when  have  missionaries  exposed  their  country 
to  war?     When  have  missionaries  appealed  to  governments  to 


MISSIONS  AND  POLITICS  199 

avenge  their  wrongs?  When  have  they  sought  to  rely  on  military 
force  ?  Speaking  for  the  Protestant  missions  of  America,  I  do  not 
know.  I  believe  that  never  in  their  history  have  the  foreign 
missionaries  sent  out  from  America  exposed  their  country  to 
war,  appealed  to  their  Government  to  avenge  their  wrongs, 
or  sought  to  rely  on  military  force.  The  missionary  organisa- 
tions may  have  asked  their  Government  to  maintain  treaty  rights 
or  to  secure  the  establishment  of  justice  or  to  protect  lives,  but 
never  by  the  use  of  force,  and  always  in  the  interest  of  foreigners 
and  natives  alike  who  suffer  equally  from  injustice  and  wrong- 
doing. The  Resolutions  of  the  Glasgow  Peace  Conference  repre- 
sent the  excitement  over  false  issues  into  which  good  people  who 
do  not  know  the  facts  or  who  generalise  from  such  national  sets 
of  facts  as  the  French  and  German  Roman  Catholic  missions  may 
present,  too  easily  stir  themselves. 

The  simple,  practical  questions  are  first:  What  are  the  duties 
of  governments  toward  missionaries?  and,  second:  What  are  the 
duties  of  missionaries  with  reference  to  those  duties  of  govern- 
ments toward  them  which  constitute  their  rights? 

Now,  with  reference  to  the  first  of  these  questions,  there 
have  not  been  wanting  such  statesmen  as  John  Sherman,  who 
held  that  the  missionary  had  no  right  to  political  protection, 
and  that  his  Government  had  no  such  duty  toward  him,  that 
his  special  errand  annulled  his  political  rights.  And  when  such 
sober  and  responsible  statesmen  have  taken  this  view,  it  is  not 
to  be  wondered  at  that  other  men  and  newspapers,  which  were 
neither  sober  nor  responsible,  should  look  at  the  matter  in  the 
same  light.  And  among  sober  and  responsible  men  who  could 
not  take  Mr.  Sherman's  view  there  have  still  been  many  who 
felt  annoyed  at  the  missionary  enterprise,  and  who  wished  that 
governments  might  be  spared  the  trouble  occasioned  by  it.  Lord 
Salisbury  said  there  were  some  such  in  the  British  Foreign 
Office.  It  was  in  a  speech  at  the  Bi-Centenary  of  the  Society 
for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel,  January  19,  1900,  in  which, 
with  the  sincerity  and  missionary  sympathy  of  a  Christian  man, 
he  dealt  with  this  fundamental  problem  of  the  relation  of  mis- 
sions  and   politics,   and    recognised   both   the    duty   of   govern- 


200  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

ments  and  the  great  question  of  duty  which  missions  had  to 
face: 

We  owe  to  this  great  Society  our  assistance  not  only  on  account 
of  those  high  and  generous  motives  to  which  your  president 
appealed,  but  because  the  civilisation  which  it  is  in  a  small  degree 
our  duty  to  serve,  is  not  an  unmixed  blessing  to  this  and  other 
missionary  societies.  We  owe  you  assistance  because  we  are  not 
able  to  avoid  bringing  a  certain  impediment  to  your  work.  I 
do  not  merely  allude  to  the  example  which  is  set  by  Christian 
or  so-called  Christian  men  in  other  lands.  They  are  open  to 
great  temptations.  They  have  great  difficulties  to  contend  with. 
It  may  well  be  that  there  the  spectacle  of  what  they  are  doing 
and  the  lives  they  are  living  is  not  always  calculated  to  further 
the  work  of  missionary  societies.  But  that  is  only  partially  the 
case.  I  believe  that  over  the  vast  area  of  the  British  Empire 
the  mass  of  those  who  draw  their  origin  and  receive  their  teach- 
ing from  these  shores  are  no  unworthy  members  of  the  religious 
bodies  to  which  they  belong. 

Yet  we  must  recognise  the  difficulties  which  it  is  not  in  our 
power  to  avoid  placing  in  the  path  of  missionary  societies.  The 
difficulty  results  not  so  much  from  any  lack  on  our  part  of  desire 
to  assist  them,  but  because  our  very  assistance  carries  with  it 
certain  drawbacks.  We  are  startled  when  we  read  the  history 
of  vast  and  sudden  conversions  in  old  time  and  of  the  tremendous 
moral  and  spiritual  power  which  seemed  to  sweep  over  a  race 
or  over  a  country  in  obedience  to  the  preachings  of  the  early 
missionaries  of  Christianity,  and  we  wonder  whether  it  will  ever 
be  that  phenomena  of  that  striking  character  will  take  place  in 
our  own  time.  But  we  must  recognise  that  the  position  is  en- 
tirely different.  In  the  Church  of  old  time  great  evangelists 
went  forth  to  their  work,  exposed  themselves  to  fearful  dangers, 
and  suffered  all  the  terrors  that  the  world  could  inflict  in  support 
of  the  doctrines  which  they  preached  and  the  morality  which 
they  practised.  There  was  no  doubt  at  the  same  time  a  corrupt 
society  calling  itself  by  their  name.  But,  as  your  president  has 
pointed  out  to  you,  the  means  of  communication  were  not  active, 
and  were  not  as  they  are  now,  and  things  might  go  on  without 
attracting  the  attention  of  those  who  listened  to  the  teaching 
of  the  earlier  teachers  or  diminishing  the  value  of  their  work. 
Now  things  are  considerably  altered,  and  that  very  increase  in 
the  means  of  communication,  that  very  augmentation  of  the 
power  of  opinion  to  affect  opinion,  and  of  man  to  affect  man  by 
the  mere  conquests  that  we  have  achieved  in  the  material  do- 


MISSIONS  AND  POLITICS  201 

main;  those  very  conquests,  while  undoubtedly  they  are,  as  the 
Archbishop  said,  an  invitation  for  Providence  to  take  advantage 
of  the  means  of  spreading  the  Gospel,  are  also  a  means  by  which 
the  lives  of  many  and  the  acts  of  many,  which  are  not  wholly 
consistent  with  the  ideal  which  is  preached  in  the  pulpit,  or  read 
in  the  Holy  Book,  are  brought  home  to  the  knowledge  of  the 
vast  nations  which  we  seek  to  address.  That  is  one  of  the  great 
difficulties  with  which  we  have  to  contend,  and  that  is  one  reason 
why  this  Society  and  all  missionary  societies  appeal  with  un- 
doubted force  and  with  the  right  to  have  their  appeal  considered 
— that  as  our  civilisation  in  its  measure  tends  to  hamper  mis- 
sionary efforts,  so  in  its  nobler  manifestations  and  its  more 
powerful  efforts  that  civilisation,  represented  by  our  assistance, 
shall  push  forward  to  its  ultimate  victory  the  cause  to  which 
you  are  devoted. 

But  this  is  not  the  point  on  which  it  seems  to  me  the  great 
difficulty  of  our  present  time  arises.  If  an  evangelist  or  an 
apostle,  a  Boniface  or  a  Columba,  preached  in  the  Middle  Ages 
he  faced  the  difficulties,  he  underwent  the  martyrdom,  and  he 
braved  the  torments  to  which  he  was  exposed,  and  the  whole  of 
the  great  moral  and  spiritual  influence  of  his  self-devotion  acted 
without  hindrance  upon  the  people  whom  he  addressed.  But  now 
if  a  Boniface  or  a  Columba  is  exposed  to  these  martyrdoms  the 
result  is  an  appeal  to  the  Consul  and  the  mission  of  a  gunboat, 
and,  unfortunately,  though  that  cannot  be  helped,  though  it  is 
a  blame  to  nobody,  though  it  is  far,  indeed,  from  being  a  blame 
to  our  devoted  missionaries,  though  I  cannot  admit  that  it  is 
a  blame  to  the  secular  Government  by  whom  their  end  is  avenged, 
still  it  does  diminish  the  purely  spiritual  aspect  and  action  of 
Christian  teaching.  It  does  give  to  men  an  opportunity  and 
a  temptation  to  attach  a  different  meaning  to  that  teaching  and 
to  suspect  it  of  objects  which  are  far,  indeed,  away  from  the 
thoughts  of  those  who  urge  it.   .    .    . 

Remember  that  in  old  times  if  an  evangelist  gave  himself  up 
to  martyrdom  he  derived  the  crown  for  which  he  looked,  and 
he  did  not  injure  the  cause  that  he  was  preaching  or  those  per- 
sons whose  interest  he  represented.  But  now  any  man  who  so 
conducts  himself  that  his  zeal  leads  to  martyrdom,  at  least  incurs 
this  danger — that  he  will  expose  the  lives  of  those  to  whom  he 
is  preaching,  and — what  is  probably  in  the  material  results  even 
worse — that  he  will  cause  the  shedding  of  the  blood  of  his  own 
countrymen,  the  soldiers  and  the  sailors  by  whom  his  country- 
men are  defended,  and  who  will  be  forced  for  the  sake  of  their 
fellow-countrymen  and  in  order  to  avoid  similar,  or  perhaps  even 


202  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

worse,  outrages  in  the  future,  to  enter  upon  military  and  hostile 
proceedings  in  order  to  avenge  their  death  and  prevent  the  out- 
rages being  repeated.  It  is  a  terrible  dilemma.  They  cannot 
renounce,  they  cannot  abandon,  they  cannot  even  be  lukewarm 
in  the  commission  which  they  have  received.  On  the  other  hand, 
there  is  a  real  danger  that  if  they  do  not  observe  the  utmost 
caution,  they  may  cause  the  loss  of  many,  many  lives,  and  they 
may  attach  to  the  religion  which  they  desire  to  preach  the  dis- 
credit of  being  an  instrument  of  territorial  greed  and  a  weapon 
of  that  warfare  which  one  secular  Power  wages  against  another. 
I  have  urged  what  is  not  a  pleasant  topic,  because  I  feel  that  it 
is  one  that  ought  to  sink  deep  into  the  hearts  of  those  who 
manage  Missions.  They  run  the  risk,  not  in  their  own  lives, 
of  producing  terrible  events  on  a  gigantic  scale,  because  their 
position  is  closely  mixed  up  with  that  of  the  secular  Powers,  and 
because  the  secular  Powers,  in  justice  to  their  own  subjects,  are 
unable  to  allow  their  death  to  go  unavenged. —  (Church  Mis- 
sionary Intelligencer,  July,  1900,  pp.  547-549.) 

On  the  question  of  the  missionaries'  relations  to  their  gov- 
ernments, Professor  Coolidge  of  Harvard  University  has  ex- 
pressed in  his  book  on  "  The  United  States  as  a  World  Power  " 
what  many  would  regard  as  the  tolerant  and  large-minded  view 
of  the  unprejudiced  man: 

To  the  diplomat  and  to  the  consul,  unless  they  happen  to 
have  personal  sympathy  with  efforts  to  spread  Christianity,  the 
missionaries  appear  chiefly  to  be  makers  of  endless  trouble. 
Without  passing  a  summary  judgment  on  so  many-sided  a  con- 
troversy, we  can  understand  the  point  of  view  of  those  who 
declare  that  the  coming  of  strangers  to  convert  a  people  of  ancient 
civilisation  from  long-inherited  beliefs  with  which  they  are  satis- 
fied, is  an  impertinence  in  itself;  that  the  missionaries  frequently 
lack  tact,  and  by  their  meddlesomeness  get  into  unnecessary  diffi- 
culties, and  that  what  good  they  have  accomplished  has  been 
incommensurate  with  the  money  spent  in  doing  it.  All  this  may 
be  more  or  less  true,  but  unprejudiced  observers  bear  witness 
that,  notwithstanding  the  jibes  of  the  foreign  settlements  about 
the  missionaries'  comfortable  mode  of  life,  the  latter  often  set 
a  fine  example  of  unselfishness ;  that  they  have  alleviated  much 
suffering,  and  in  many  cases  they  have  done  great  good  to  in- 
dividuals if  not  to  nations  as  a  whole.  They  have  also  more 
than  once  been  helpful  to  their  own  government,  and  they  have 


MISSIONS  AND  POLITICS  203 

promoted  civilisation  by  adding  to  our  knowledge  of  the  lands 
where  they  have  worked,  often  at  the  price  of  untold  hardships 
and  perils,  and  sometimes  at  the  cost  of  their  lives.  Finally,  it 
should  be  noted  that  at  the  present  day  the  Protestant  missionary 
of  the  older  type,  whose  single  idea  was  that  of  preaching  the 
Gospel  to  the  recalcitrant  heathen  in  season  and  out  of  season, 
is  dying  out.  In  his  place  we  find  the  practical,  efficient  repre- 
sentative of  Christianity,  who  gives  more  time  to  looking  after 
the  material  wants  of  his  flock,  and  in  particular  to  the  cure  of 
their  diseases,  than  he  does  to  direct  propaganda.   .    .    . 

Whatever  may  be  the  personal  opinions  of  the  official  repre- 
sentatives of  the  United  States  in  the  Far  East  they  were  obliged 
to  protect  their  missionary  fellow-citizens  in  the  rights  which 
treaties  had  accorded  to  them.     (p.  3286°.) 

Professor  Coolidge  recognises  the  simple  fact  that  the  mis- 
sionary has  a  standing  as  a  citizen,  and  that  where  he  is  at 
work  he  is  at  work  as  a  man;  i.e.,  as  a  man  with  a  country 
which  has  authority  over  him  and  responsibility  for  him.  This 
is  the  fundamental  fact.  The  missionary  is  a  citizen  engaged 
in  a  recognised  and  legitimate  activity,  and  as  such  he  has 
the  right  to  attend  to  his  business  and  his  Government  has  the 
duty  to  protect  him  in  it.  "  There  seems  to  be  in  a  part  of 
the  public  press  of  our  country,"  said  Mr.  Foster  at  the  time 
of  the  Chinese  riots  in  1895,  "  a  misconception  of  the  ground 
upon  which  our  Government  bases  its  intervention  on  account 
of  these  riots.  It  is  not  because  we  are  a  Christian  country 
and  are  seeking  to  support  a  Christian  propagandism  in  China. 
It  is  simply  because  the  people  in  whose  behalf  our  Govern- 
ment intervenes  are  American  citizens,  pursuing  a  vocation 
guaranteed  by  treaty  and  permitted  by  Chinese  law.  It  should 
also  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  Imperial  Government  has  re- 
peatedly recognised  the  salutary  influence  of  Christian  missions 
in  their  moral  tendencies,  their  educational  and  medical  work, 
and  their  charities.  The  American  missionary  has  the  same 
right  to  go  into  all  parts  of  the  Chinese  Empire  and  preach 
and  teach  in  the  name  of  his  Master  as  the  American  merchant 
has  to  carry  on  his  trade  with  South  America  or  the  Islands  of 
the  Pacific,  and  he  has  the  same  right  to  invoke  the  protection 


204  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

of  his  Government  when  his  lawful  vocation  is  unduly  obstructed 
or  his  life  or  property  put  in  peril."— (New  York  Sun,  Septem- 
ber 9,  1895.) 

Any  distinction  between  missionaries  and  other  classes  of 
citizens  is  impossible.  Some  have  proposed  that  the  rights 
recognised  in  the  case  of  others  should  be  denied  to  missionaries. 
But  it  would  not  be  practicable,  as  the  Spectator  once  remarked, 
to  classify  our  citizens  who  go  abroad  into  "  burnable  "  and  "  un- 
burnable,"  to  distinguish  to  the  easy  recognition  of  each  Chinese 
or  Turkish  villager  those  Scotchmen  who  might  with  propriety  be 
murdered  and  their  homes  ravished  from  those  whom  the  British 
Government  was  unwilling  to  surrender  to  such  treatment.  In- 
deed, if  distinctions  are  to  be  made,  we  have  some  representatives 
abroad  whose  expulsion  from  the  lands  where  they  have  gone 
would  be  quite  justifiable,  but  all  who  are  there  in  legitimate 
business  and  on  a  legitimate  basis  must  be  equally  protected  in 
their  rights. 

I  am  not  raising  yet  the  question  whether  a  missionary  should 
have  any  political  rights,  but  am  only  pointing  out  that  the 
fact  is  that  he  does  have  in  every  land  where  he  is  at  work 
rights  already  acknowledged  by  his  Government,  and  the  Gov- 
ernment under  which  he  works.  Some  of  these  rights  have 
grown  up  from  long  usage,  and  some  of  them  have  been  em- 
bodied in  treaty  stipulations.  In  China  his  work  is  specially 
described  and  authorised.  Article  XIV  of  the  last  American 
Treaty  (1903)  reads: 

The  principles  of  the  Christian  religion,  as  professed  by  the 
Protestant  and  Roman  Catholic  Churches,  are  recognised  as 
teaching  men  to  do  good  and  to  do  to  others  as  they  would 
have  others  do  to  them.  Those  who  quietly  profess  and  teach 
these  doctrines  shall  not  be  harassed  or  persecuted  on  account 
of  their  faith.  Any  person,  whether  citizen  of  the  United  States 
or  Chinese  convert,  who,  according  to  these  tenets,  peaceably 
teaches  and  practises  the  principles  of  Christianity,  shall  in  no 
case  be  interfered  with  or  molested  therefor.  No  restrictions 
shall  be  placed  on  Chinese  joining  Christian  Churches.  Con- 
verts and  non-converts,  being  Chinese  subjects,  shall  alike  con- 
form to  the  laws  of  China;  and  shall  pay  due  respect  to  those 


MISSIONS  AND  POLITICS  205 

in  authority,  living  together  in  peace  and  amity ;  and  the  fact 
of  being  converts  shall  not  protect  them  from  the  consequences 
of  any  offence  they  may  have  committed  before  or  may  commit 
after  their  admission  into  the  Church,  or  exempt  them  from 
paying  legal  taxes  levied  on  Chinese  subjects  generally,  except 
taxes  levied  and  contributions  for  the  support  of  religious  cus- 
toms and  practices  contrary  to  their  faith.  Missionaries  shall 
not  interfere  with  the  exercise  by  the  native  authorities  of  their 
jurisdiction  over  Chinese  subjects;  nor  shall  the  native  authori- 
ties make  any  distinction  between  converts  and  non-converts, 
but  shall  administer  the  laws  without  partiality  so  that  both 
classes  can  live  in  peace. 

Missionary  societies  of  the  United  States  shall  be  permitted 
to  rent  and  to  lease  in  perpetuity,  as  the  property  for  such 
societies,  buildings,  or  lands  in  all  parts  of  the  Empire  for 
missionary  purposes,  and,  after  the  title  deeds  have  been  found 
in  order  and  duly  stamped  by  the  local  authorities,  to  erect  such 
suitable  buildings  as  may  be  required  for  carrying  on  their  good 
work. 

There  can  be  no  question  that  the  missionary  has  political 
rights  under  this  treaty.  And  even  in  Turkey  his  presence  and 
work  are  covered  by  elaborate  capitulations  and  international 
agreements.  The  work  of  the  American  missionaries  there,  Mr. 
Bayard  declared  when  Secretary  of  State,  "  rests  on  usage 
amounting  from  duration  and  the  incidents  assigned  to  it  by 
law,  to  a  charter." — (Dwight,  "  Treaty  Rights  of  American 
Missionaries  in  Turkey.") 

But  there  are  some  who  admit  that  the  missionary  enterprise 
does  have  a  legal  status  who  nevertheless  think  that  it  ought 
not  to  have,  and  that  governments  should  disavow  any  re- 
sponsibility for  the  protection  of  missionary  agents.  Before 
we  examine  some  of  the  arguments  for  this  view,  it  is  well 
to  observe  that  the  abrogation  of  an  existing  right  does  not 
leave  matters  where  they  would  be  if  the  right  had  never  been 
recognised.  If  ignored  by  governments  from  the  beginning 
the  missionary  enterprise  would  have  made  its  own  place,  and 
that  place  would  not  be  less  influential  than  it  is,  but  its  position 
in  that  case  would  not  be  the  position  into  which  it  would  fall 
if  all  the  historical  development  of  the  last  century  as  affecting 


206  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

the  relation  of  missions  and  politics  were  to  be  annulled.  To 
say  to  China  and  Turkey  to-day :  "  All  rights  of  missionaries 
are  waived  by  Great  Britain  and  America ;  you  can  do  what 
you  please  with  them,"  is  not  to  leave  the  missionaries  where 
they  would  be  if  governments  had  never  concerned  themselves 
with  them,  and  if  they  had  always  been  and  were  entirely  dis- 
sociated from  all  political  relationships. 

And  what  are  the  reasons  proposed  for  such  a  course?  It 
is  said  that  the  missionary  is  not  like  other  foreigners,  that 
he  is  a  disturber  and  source  of  sedition,  that  the  people  do  not 
want  him,  but  are  desirous  of  receiving  the  trader,  that  religion 
and  its  activities  are  not,  like  trade,  a  matter  of  government 
cognisance.  The  missionary,  thank  God,  is  different  from  some 
foreigners,  but  the  difference  between  him  and  other  decent 
foreigners  is  much  less  than  the  difference  between  the  various 
types  of  merchants  and  consuls  who  go  to  the  non-Christian 
nations.  He  is  a  disturber  of  what  is  evil  and  unjust  in  native 
customs  and  in  Western  morals,  but  he  is  an  element  of  good- 
will and  common  understanding  wherever  he  lives.  Opium, 
rum,  dishonest  trade,  high-handed  diplomacy,  commercial  piracy 
have  made  a  million  times  more  disturbance  and  sedition.  The 
missionary  is  the  most  popular  foreigner  in  any  land  to  which 
he  goes.  He  makes  more  friends  for  himself  and  for  his  nation. 
He  has  never  been  forced  on  one  country  by  war  as  trade  has 
been.  And  the  introduction  of  trade  has  religious  results  as 
real,  if  not  as  adequate,  as  the  work  of  missionaries.  We  de- 
ceive ourselves  if  we  think  that  we  do  not  interfere  with  the 
Eastern  religions  except  through  our  missionaries.  In  the  East 
all  life  is  permeated  by  religious  ideas,  and  whatever  touches 
the  life  of  the  East  or  of  Africa  at  all  affects  its  religious  con- 
ceptions. The  first  trolley  cars  in  Seoul  were  mobbed  because 
they  offended  the  deities  and  caused  a  drought.  The  first  cars 
in  Bangkok  were  worshipped  by  multitudes.  All  our  contact 
with  the  non-Christian  world  recognised  as  politically  legitimate 
is  religiously  destructive.  Are  we  to  be  free  only  to  tear  down, 
and  is  the  one  agency  by  which  we  seek  to  replace  what  we 
are  destroying  to  be  outlawed?     Are  we  to  be  free  to  spread 


MISSIONS  AND  POLITICS  207 

our  diseases  over  the  world,  but  not  to  heal  them;  to  teach  the 
nations  that  their  wisdom  is  false,  but  not  where  the  true  wisdom 
is  to  be  found? 

Waiving  the  missionary  point  of  view  and  regarding  the 
matter  wholly  from  the  side  of  politics,  I  believe  that  the  mis- 
sionary enterprise  is  the  most  legitimate  utterance  of  the  West 
to  the  East,  and  that  if  governments  have  any  right  whatever 
to  deal  with  other  governments,  they  have  a  right  and  duty 
to  deal  with  them  in  behalf  of  the  best  and  most  unselfish 
activities  of  their  people.  The  people  of  the  West  will  never 
take  any  other  view.  The  proposal  to  separate  missionaries 
and  to  delegalise  their  undertaking  is  wasted  breath.  The  sen- 
timent of  the  Western  people  will  always  be  what  it  has  always 
been  since  the  missionary  duty  reached  its  conscience.  Earl 
Granville  expressed  it  in  his  letter  to  Mr.  Wade,  the  British 
minister  to  China  in  1871 :  "  It  is  the  duty  of  a  missionary,  as 
of  every  other  British  subject,  to  avoid  giving  offence  as  far 
as  possible  to  the  Chinese  authorities  or  people,  but  he  does 
not  forfeit  the  rights  to  which  he  is  entitled  under  the  treaty 
as  a  British  subject  because  of  his  missionary  character,"  and 
he  closed  his  letter  with  an  assertion  of  Her  Majesty's  Govern- 
ment's declination  to  supplement  existing  treaties  by  regulations 
designed  to  deal  with  missionaries  alone."  (Correspondence 
respecting  the  Circular  of  the  Chinese  Government  of  February 
9,  1871,  relating  to  missionaries.  China,  No.  1,  1872,  pp.  19, 
20.)  The  missionaries  are  citizens  of  their  nations,  and  wher- 
ever they  go  have  the  rights  and  duties  of  such  citizens. 

But  there  remains  the  other  question  as  to  what  missionaries 
should  do  with  their  political  rights.  There  have  not  been 
wanting  missionaries  who  have  held  that  they  should  be  entirely 
waived.  Wilmot  Brooke  and  Alfred  Robinson  laid  this  down  as 
one  of  their  principles  in  their  short-lived  mission  to  the  Soudan 
twenty  years  ago :  "  As  the  missionaries  enter  the  Moslem  states 
under  the  necessity  of  violating  the  law  of  Islam,  which  forbids 
any  one  to  endeavour  to  turn  Moslems  to  Christ,  they  could 
not  under  any  circumstances  ask  for  British  intervention  to  ex- 
tricate them  from  the  dangers  which  they  thus  call  down  upon 


208  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

themselves.  But  also  for  the  sake  of  the  natives  who  have  to 
be  urged  to  bear  the  wrath  of  men  for  Christ's  sake,  it  is  nec- 
essary that  the  missionaries  should  themselves  take  the  lead  in 
facing  these  dangers,  and  should  in  every  possible  way  make  it 
clear  to  all  that  they  do  not  desire  to  shelter  themselves  as 
British  subjects,  from  the  liabilities  of  perils  which  would  attach 
to  Christian  converts  from  Mohammedanism  in  the  Soudan. 
They  will  therefore  voluntarily  lay  aside  all  claim  to  protection 
as  British  subjects,  and  place  themselves,  while  outside  British 
territory,  under  the  authority  of  the  native  rulers." 

And  Dr.  M.  H.  Houston,  one  of  the  most  devoted  mission- 
aries in  China,  for  some  years  also  Secretary  of  the  Executive 
Committee  of  Foreign  Missions  of  the  Presbyterian  Church  in 
the  United  States  (South),  argued  for  this  principle  in  the  case 
of  missionaries  in  China  in  a  paper  on  "  Appeals  for  Redress  " 
in  the  Chinese  Recorder  of  February,  1906 :  "  Should  the  Gov- 
ernment of  the  United  States  forbid  its  citizens  to  go  as  mis- 
sionaries to  China,  would  we  obey?  Should  this  Government 
order  all  its  citizens  now  working  here  as  missionaries  to  leave 
the  field,  would  we  depart?  Not  at  all.  And  now,  if  the  mis- 
sionary is  called  to  work  and  to  speak  independently  of  the  civil 
power,  is  it  fair,  is  it  just,  when  he  finds  himself  in  distress,  to 
call  in  the  aid  of  this  power?  And  if  he  considers  himself 
under  the  protection  of  this  power,  and  does  call  on  it  for  aid, 
is  he  not  then  bound  in  honour  to  listen  to  its  voice  when  it 
bids  him  restrict  his  movements  in  the  field?  .  .  .  Now,  is  it 
well  for  a  missionary  to  have  his  movements  restrained  by  a 
consul  ?  If  the  right  to  restrict  be  conceded,  who  can  tell  how 
far  it  will  extend?  And  yet,  if  the  missionary  invoke  consular 
aid,  is  he  not  bound  in  honour  to  heed  the  consular  voice?  .  .  . 
Now,  suppose  that  every  missionary  in  China  should  resolve  that 
henceforth,  under  no  circumstances,  will  he  appeal  to  any  earthly 
government.  He  teaches  men  everywhere  to  be  subject  to  the 
powers  that  be.  He  prays  always  for  kings  and  for  all  in  au- 
thority. But  he  will  bring  before  them  no  request  for  pro- 
tection or  aid.  If  his  persecutions  are  not  too  great,  he  will 
bear  them.     If  they  threaten  too  much,  he  will   flee.     If  his 


MISSIONS  AND  POLITICS  209 

property  is  destroyed,  he  will  take  joyfully  the  spoiling  of  his 
goods  in  view  of  his  heavenly  treasure,  and  no  representation 
of  the  case  shall  be  made  to  ministers  or  consul.  If  he  is  killed, 
his  comrades  will  bury  him  as  '  devout  men  carried  Stephen  to 
his  burial,'  and  they  will  do  no  more."  Such  a  course  of  action, 
Dr.  Houston  argued,  would  enlist  the  sympathy  of  diplomats 
and  statesmen  who  would  be  relieved  of  annoyance  on  account 
of  missionaries,  would  restore  missions  to  their  apostolic  char- 
acter, would  have  a  salutary  effect  upon  native  Christians,  now 
injured  by  appeals  in  their  behalf  to  the  civil  power,  would 
open  new  doors  of  work  and  access,  and  would  result  in  the 
dropping  of  various  impedimenta  now  weighing  on  the  mission 
work  and  in  the  accession  of  more  heroic  missionaries. 

This  view  is  by  no  means  as  simple  as  it  appears.  (1)  It 
ignores  the  fact  that  missionaries  are  citizens,  that  they  cannot 
divest  themselves  of  their  civil  rights  and  duties  by  going  abroad, 
and  that  they  do  owe  a  debt  to  their  own  government  and  are 
bound  at  least  to  consider  consular  advice.  Dr.  Houston  would 
teach  men  everywhere  to  be  subject  to  the  powers  that  be — that 
must  mean,  in  the  case  of  the  missionary,  a  just  consideration  of 
his  political  duties.  (2)  It  overlooks  the  fact  that  governments 
have  duties  which  they  cannot  ignore.  A  government  may  not 
permit  injustice  and  contempt  for  treaty  obligation,  however 
willing  its  citizens  may  be  to  accept  such  hardships.  "  A  citizen 
himself,"  said  Mr.  Taft  in  his  Presidential  message,  December, 
1909,  "  cannot  by  contract  or  otherwise  divest  himself  of  the 
right,  nor  can  this  Government  escape  the  obligation,  of  his 
protection  in  his  personal  and  property  rights  when  these  are 
unjustly  infringed  in  a  foreign  country."  (3)  The  proposed 
course  imperils  all  foreigners.  The  missionary  is  bound  to  do 
his  duty,  but  he  is  also  to  consider  in  the  determination  of 
his  duty  the  rights  of  others  and  the  effect  of  his  course  of 
action  upon  them.  For  him  to  announce  that  treaty  obligations 
as  they  affect  him  may  be  overridden  with  impunity  is  to  create 
a  peril  for  others  whom  he  has  no  right  to  endanger.  (4)  Citi- 
zenship abroad  is  no  more  unChristian  than  citizenship  at  home. 
If  it  is  right  for  a  man  to  enjoy  the  protection  and  immunities 


210  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

of  good  government  while  in  his  own  land,  it  is  not  wrong  for 
him  to  do  so  in  other  lands.  The  renunciation  of  political  rights 
in  foreign  missionary  work  is  no  more  a  Christian  duty  than 
their  renunciation  in  Christian  work  at  home.  This  view  rests 
on  an  inadequate  conception  of  the  place  of  the  state  in  the 
divine  organisation  of  society.  It  is  not  by  the  Church  alone 
that  God  educates  and  governs  men.  The  family  and  the  state 
are  divine  institutions,  as  well  as  the  Church.  Government  is 
ordained  of  God,  and  it  is  ordained  of  God  to  do  right  and  to 
prevent  wrong.  The  missionary  enterprise  cannot  commit  itself 
to  a  vicious  and  atheistic  theory  of  government.  The  nation  is 
bound  to  fulfil  its  obligations  of  protection  to  every  citizen, 
even  the  most  unselfish.  (6)  The  course  of  the  apostle  Paul, 
usually  appealed  to  as  justifying  a  renunciation  by  the  missionary 
of  his  political  rights,  proves  precisely  the  opposite.  Inside  the 
Roman  Empire  he  again  and  again  made  use  of  his  political 
prerogatives.  Under  the  principle  of  extra-territoriality,  and  it 
is  only  when  that  principle  prevails,  practically,  that  Dr.  Hous- 
ton's problem  arises,  the  missionary  is  under  the  jurisdiction  of 
his  own  government  and  within  its  protection,  just  as  Paul  was 
in  the  Roman  Empire,  and  if  he  avails  himself  of  that  protection, 
is  doing  just  what  Paul  did.  And  in  other  lands  a  missionary 
does  not  do  otherwise  than  we  believe  Paul  would  do  to-day, 
when  he  remembers  his  nationality  and  the  rights  and  duties 
which  it  involves.  (7)  A  man  cannot  in  this  way  expatriate  him- 
self and  become  a  nationless  man.  It  is  not  Christian  that  he 
should.  He  has  a  land  and  a  flag  which  demand  an  allegiance  of 
him  and  hold  their  privilege  over  him.  (8)  And  lastly,  the  mis- 
sionary aim  does  not  require  of  the  men  who  seek  to  realise  it 
that  they  should  be  men  without  a  country.  It  only  requires 
that  they  should  use  their  nationality  and  all  that  it  involves 
in  such  a  way  as  to  advance  and  not  to  retard  the  reali- 
sation of  their  aim.  In  the  possession  and  enjoyment  of 
political  rights  there  is  nothing  essentially  inconsistent  with 
this  aim. 

But  if  we  cannot  accept  the  principle  that  missionaries  should 
waive  all  political  rights,  a  principle  which  is  impossible  because 


MISSIONS  AND  POLITICS  211 

whatever  missionaries  might  propose  they  are  citizens  still  and 
cannot  escape  their  civil  responsibilities,  we  cannot,  on  the  other 
hand,  accept  the  view  that  the  possession  of  rights  necessitates 
or  justifies  their  exercise  to  the  full  limit.  As  Woolsey  says 
in  his  "  Political  Science,"  "  Rights  may  be  waived.  The  very 
nature  of  a  right  implies  that  the  subject  of  it  decides  whether 
he  shall  exercise  it  or  not  in  a  particular  case."  Here  at  home 
no  Christian  thinks  of  demanding  all  his  rights.  The  mark  of 
a  Christian  is  the  renunciation  of  rights.  This  was  the  principle 
of  the  Incarnation  of  the  Son  of  God,  Who,  though  He  was  on 
an  equality  with  God,  counted  not  His  right  of  equality  as  a 
thing  to  be  retained,  but  emptied  Himself  and  took  on  Him  the 
form  of  a  servant.  On  this  same  principle  the  missionary  enter- 
prise proceeds.  "  It  is  dangerous  for  us,"  writes  Dr.  John  Ross 
of  Manchuria,  "  to  demand  always  what  we  call  '  treaty  rights  ' 
— rights  under  treaties  extorted  from  China.  Better  to  quietly 
endure  many  a  wrong  than  assist  by  ever  claiming  our  '  rights  ' 
to  deepen  the  sense  of  irritation  given  by  our  presence  in  China. 
Where  and  when  that  endurance  should  end  must  be  left  to 
individual  conscience." 

And  yet  not  entirely  so,  for  the  determining  element  in  the 
decision  must  be  the  missionary  aim.  Missionaries  are  citizens 
and  have  certain  rights  and  duties,  and  the  way  they  will  act 
will  be  governed,  not  by  their  personal  interest,  but  by  the 
dominating  aim  of  their  lives  and  of  their  enterprise.  The 
missionary  movement  insists  on  the  legitimacy  of  its  character, 
on  the  full  responsibility  of  governments  toward  all  their  citi- 
zens, on  the  possession  by  missionaries  of  full  civil  privileges, 
and  on  the  principle  of  self-renunciation  in  all  who  are  con- 
cerned in  the  movement,  by  which  all  rights  are  viewed  in  their 
relation  to  the  mission  aim,  and  are  waived  or  exercised  as  the 
interests  of  that  aim  require.  What  will  best  tend  to  make 
Christ  known?  What  will  contribute  most  to  the  development 
of  an  indigenous  Church?  What  will  soonest  make  a  home  for 
Christianity  in  the  national  life?  These  are  the  questions  which 
must  be  asked.  They  are  not  easy  to  answer,  but  it  is  foolish 
to  think  that  the  problem  can  be  settled  by  some  simple  legalistic 


212  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

rule.  Mistakes  will  be  made  in  trying  to  answer  these  questions, 
but  God  will  overrule  these,  and  an  honest  effort  to  apply  the 
principles  involved  in  the  aim  of  missions  will  carry  us  further 
toward  the  goal  than  the  adoption  of  any  arbitrary  and  un- 
warrantable statute. 

It  is  questioned  by  some  whether  the  aim  of  missions  is 
inconsistent  with  demands  for  punishment,  with  requests  for  in- 
demnity, with  appeals  for  military  interference  or  support,  with 
all  use  of  physical  force.  It  is  clear  to  some  that  it  is  right  for 
a  man  to  tell  his  government  such  facts  as  it  should  know  in 
order  to  determine  its  duty.  The  presumption  is  certainly  against 
all  the  other  things,  but  men  must  judge  each  case  alone,  and  it 
is  safer  that  they  should  not  be  alone  in  judging  it.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  an  insignificantly  small  number  of  missionaries  have 
ever  done  anything  of  the  sort  or  made  any  representation  of 
any  kind,  either  to  their  own  consuls  or  to  native  officials.  "  The 
Principles  and  Practice  "  of  the  China  Inland  Mission  expresses 
the  actual  practice  and  the  accepted  principles  of  all  missionaries : 
"  Too  great  caution  cannot  be  exercised  by  all  missionaries  resid- 
ing or  journeying  inland  to  avoid  difficulties  and  complications 
with  the  people,  and  especially  with  the  authorities.  Every  mem- 
ber of  the  mission  must  understand  that  he  goes  out  depending 
for  help  and  protection  on  the  living  God,  and  not  relying  on  an 
arm  of  flesh.  Appeals  to  consuls  or  to  Chinese  officials  to  procure 
the  punishment  of  offenders,  or  to  demand  the  vindication  of  real 
or  supposed  rights,  or  for  indemnification  for  losses,  are  to  be 
avoided.  Should  trouble  or  persecution  arise  inland,  a  friendly 
representation  may  be  made  to  the  local  Chinese  officials.  .  .  . 
Under  no  circumstances  may  any  missionary  on  his  own  responsi- 
bility make  any  written  appeal  to  the  British  or  other  foreign 
authorities.  .  .  .  Great  respect  must  be  shown  to  all  in  author- 
ity, and  must  also  be  manifest  in  speaking  of  them,  as  is  required 
by  the  Word  of  God.  Where  prolonged  stay  in  a  city  is  likely 
to  cause  trouble,  it  is  better  to  journey  onward,  and  where  resi- 
dence cannot  be  peaceably  and  safely  effected  to  retire  and  give 
up  or  defer  the  attempt.  .  .  .  God  will  open  more  doors  than 
we  can  enter  and  occupy.     In  conclusion,  the  weapons  of  our 


MISSIONS  AND  POLITICS  213 

warfare  must  be  practically  recognised  as  spiritual  and  not 
carnal." 

There  remain,  however,  three  great  questions  which  are  not 
covered  by  such  a  general  statement.  The  first  is  the  question 
of  the  exercise  by  missionaries  of  the  right  of  extra-territori- 
ality,  the  second  is  the  question  of  the  protection  of  native  con- 
verts, and  the  third  the  vital  question  of  the  effect  upon  the 
purity  and  vitality  of  the  mission  movement  of  its  confusion 
with  politics  and  Western  civilisation. 

A  recent  writer  in  one  of  our  best  known  reviews,  Mr. 
Richard  Weightman,  in  the  North  American  Review,  has  raised 
a  question  which  is  phrased  also  in  an  editorial  in  the  Washing- 
ton Post  (June  24,  1906),  on  which  Mr.  Weightman  is  an  edi- 
torial writer,  "  Whether  we  can  reasonably  expect  to  establish 
in  China  and  Turkey  that  basis  of  good-will  and  sympathy  upon 
which  alone  a  permanent  and  profitable  commerce  may  be 
founded,  so  long  as  our  Government  identifies  itself  officially 
with  the  missionary  propaganda."  This  identification  consists 
in  the  extension  of  the  rights  of  extra-territoriality  to  mission- 
aries. A  writer  in  the  Fortnightly  Review  has  taken  up  the 
same  question  in  an  article  on  "  Christianity  in  China."  "  The 
situation,"  he  says,  "  is  summed  up  in  the  phrase  '  extra-terri- 
toriality,' and  it  may  safely  be  said  that  no  religion  was  ever 
presented  to  a  people  under  such  peculiar  conditions."  "  The 
legal  status  of  European  missionaries,"  he  adds,  "  has  been  that 
of  superiority  to  the  laws  of  the  country  whose  hospitality  they 
have  enjoyed  and  whose  ancient  customs  they  have  attacked 
not  infrequently  with  imprudence.  It  is  not  necessary  to  dwell 
on  the  mistakes  of  individuals,  since  it  is  evident  that  the  whole 
position  was  one  which  could  not  fail  to  rouse  the  deepest  resent- 
ment in  a  people  so  proud  as  the  Chinese."  The  editorial  in 
the  Post  declares :  "  What  the  nation  really  wants  of  the  so- 
called  pagans  is  their  trade,  and  incidentally  their  money,  and 
it  is  now  very  clear  that  in  order  to  attain  that  consummation 
we  shall  have  to  treat  them  decently,  and  at  least  with  common 
consideration,  whether  we  feel  it  or  not.  .  .  .  It  is  quite  evi- 
dent that  we  cannot  evangelise  and  sell  our  goods  to  them  at 


2i4  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

the  same  time.  We  have  to  take  one  way  or  the  other,  and 
that  without  much  procrastination."  All  of  which  is  merely 
a  good  illustration  of  the  absurd  ignorance  of  facts  and  of  life 
on  the  part  of  newspaper  writers.  A  good  part  of  our  trade 
with  China  we  owe  to  missionary  work,  and  the  American 
people  have  larger  and  more  genuine  interest  in  China  than  is 
credited  to  them  by  the  Washington  Post.  The  particular  sug- 
gestion of  the  two  review  writers  is  not  much  more  sensible. 
The  exemption  of  the  citizens  or  subjects  of  Christian  nations 
from  the  jurisdiction  of  Turkey,  Persia,  Tibet,  China,  and 
Siam,  and  formerly  of  Japan  also,  was  due  to  the  fact  that 
these  countries  had,  and  in  the  case  of  the  first  four  have  now, 
neither  "  the  restraints  of  a  constitution  nor  an  orderly  adminis- 
tration of  justice  and  law."  The  conditions  in  these  lands  make 
it  impossible  to  subject  foreigners  to  their  jurisdiction.  There 
are  no  true  courts,  no  suitable  prisons,  no  fair  codes  of  law, 
no  provision  for  the  just  trial  of  offences.  There  are  bribery, 
oppression,  absolutism,  injustice,  which  it  is  shameful  enough 
that  their  own  people  must  endure.  The  Christian  nations  have 
always  refused  to  hand  over  their  subjects  to  such  iniquities. 
It  is  true  that  the  nations  have  been  restive  under  the  system, 
but  the  remedy  is  in  their  own  hands.  When  Japan  had  re- 
formed her  courts,  her  prisons,  and  her  codes,  the  Christian 
nations  surrendered  the  rights  they  had  reserved.  They  will 
gladly  do  the  same  with  the  other  nations  when  they  have  been 
duly  reformed.  Meanwhile,  the  Western  nations  can  no  more 
separate  missionaries  from  other  foreigners  in  China  than  they 
can  in  Japan  or  in  Africa,  although  the  missionaries  are  the  last 
foreigners  to  be  likely  to  fall  into  Chinese  courts  and  prisons 
and  to  need  the  protection  of  their  governments  for  crimes 
against  Chinese  laws.  The  Chinese  Government  in  1871  desired 
a  withdrawal  from  the  missionaries  of  the  right  of  extra-terri- 
toriality  when  they  went  beyond  the  places  open  to  trade  where 
foreign  consuls  resided.  The  American  Minister,  Mr.  Low, 
wrote  to  his  Government  disapproving  any  action  by  it  consent- 
ing to  the  Chinese  suggestions.  "  Neither  will  sound  policy," 
he  wrote,  "  nor  the  moral  and  religious  sentiments  of  Christian 


MISSIONS  AND  POLITICS  215 

nations,  sanction  any  retrogression,  although  trade  and  commerce 
might  be  promoted  thereby;  nor  will  the  dictates  of  humanity 
permit  the  renunciation  of  the  right  for  all  foreigners  that  they 
shall  be  governed  and  punished  by  their  own  laws." — (Letter, 
Frederick  J.  Low  to  Mr.  Fish,  March  20,  1871.)  The  Amer- 
ican Government  replied  to  Mr.  Low  that  the  idea  of  curtailing 
the  rights  of  the  missionaries  "  cannot  be  entertained  for  one 
moment  by  the  United  States." — (Letter,  J.  C.  B.  Davis  to  Mr. 
Low,  October  19,  1871.)  The  right  of  jurisdiction  on  the  part 
of  a  Christian  nation  over  one  class  of  its  citizens  in  China  and 
Turkey  and  Persia  cannot  be  waived ;  it  is  neither  right  nor 
possible  to  waive  it,  until  it  is  waived  for  all.  And  neither  the 
individual  missionary  nor  the  enterprise  can  repudiate  the  right 
and  duty  of  a  Western  government  to  such  jurisdiction.  This, 
however,  may  be  safely  said,  that  the  missionary  will  be  the 
first  Westerner  to  be  willing  to  relinquish  his  extra-territorial 
rights  and  to  pass  under  the  jurisdiction  of  a  reformed  China 
or  Turkey  or  Persia.  As  Dr.  Verbeck  was  the  first  to  seek 
in  Japan,  as  he,  a  man  without  a  nationality,  could  do,  the  pro- 
tection of  Japanese  law,  before  the  new  treaties  surrendering 
the  system  of  extra-territoriality  had  gone  into  effect,  so  now 
in  Siam  and  everywhere  the  missionaries  will  be  the  first  to 
welcome,  as  they  have  been  the  most  ardent  to  desire,  the  full 
assumption  by  the  Asiatic  nations  of  the  sovereignty  of  equal 
states. 

That  the  missionary  is  politically  an  alien  is  not  a  wrong 
thing  in  itself,  and  it  is  not  detrimental  to  his  mission.  He  is 
not  and  cannot  be  other  than  what  he  is — a  man  of  his  own 
nationality.  To  remain  such  does  not  prejudice  his  success.  His 
business  is  not  to  merge  separate  races  or  nationalities,  but  to 
give  his  burden  to  a  body  of  men  within  the  nation  to  which 
he  has  come.  If  his  spirit  is  the  spirit  of  love,  his  foreign  na- 
tionality ought  to  make  it  easier  for  him  to  build  up  an  in- 
dependent, national  consciousness  and  sense  of  autonomy  in  the 
Church  which  it  is  his  aim  to  found. 

The  second  and  more  difficult  problem  is  the  problem  of  the 
protection  of  native  Christians  from  persecution  or  punishment 


216  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

on  the  ground  of  their  Christianity.  No  one  has  ever  argued 
that  Christian  nations  should  interfere  on  behalf  of  native  Chris- 
tians to  save  them  from  the  consequences  of  evil  doing,  but 
the  question  has  long  been  before  men  as  to  the  duties  of  Chris- 
tian nations  toward  native  Christians  when  their  sole  offence 
was  their  Christian  faith,  or  when  their  faith  was  made  the 
basis  of  partial  treatment  or  discrimination. 

In  China  the  question  has  been  for  a  century  a  living  question. 
When  Robert  Morrison  began  his  work,  foreign  intercourse  and 
the  foreign  religion  were  illicit  things,  and  although  the  Opium 
War  opened  certain  points  both  to  merchant  and  missionary, 
foreigners  of  all  kinds  were  forbidden  to  enter  the  country 
beyond  the  limits  specified,  and  the  religion  which  the  foreigners 
brought  was  subject  to  the  national  dislike  of  all  that  was  for- 
eign. It  was  felt  by  S.  Wells  Williams,  accordingly,  and  by 
the  other  Christian  men  who  were  associated  with  the  nego- 
tiators of  the  treaties  with  China  after  the  Arrow  War,  that 
it  would  be  a  right  and  wise  thing  to  secure  for  Christianity 
an  explicit  toleration  in  the  new  treaties,  and  to  include  under 
their  toleration  not  the  foreign  teachers  of  Christianity  alone, 
but  also  the  natives  of  China  who  might  accept  it  and  seek 
to  propagate  it.  The  toleration  clause  in  the  American  treaty 
of  i860  was  as  follows: 

"  The  principles  of  the  Christian  religion,  as  professed  by 
the  Protestant  and  Roman  Catholic  Churches,  are  recognised 
as  teaching  men  to  do  good,  and  to  do  to  others  as  they  would 
have  others  do  to  them.  Hereafter,  those  who  quietly  profess 
and  teach  these  doctrines  shall  not  be  harassed  or  perse- 
cuted on  account  of  their  faith.  Any  person,  whether  citi- 
zen of  the  United  States  or  Chinese  convert,  who  according 
to  these  tenets  peaceably  teaches  and  practises  the  prin- 
ciples of  Christianity,  shall  in  no  case  be  interfered  with  or 
molested." 

This  clause  was  not  extorted  from  the  Chinese  commission- 
ers or  forced  upon  them.  Dr.  Williams  wrote  in  New  Haven, 
in  1878,  a  clear  and  authoritative  statement  of  how  he  came 
to  draft  the  article  and  the  Chinese  to  accept  it: 


MISSIONS  AND  POLITICS  217 

As  the  matter  of  the  "  Toleration  Clauses  "  in  the  treaties 
of  1858  has  become  one  of  general  interest  in  the  mission  body 
of  China,  I  regret  that  the  statement  concerning  it  in  the  report 
of  the  [first  missionary]  Shanghai  Conference  should  not  have 
been  more  accurate.  The  toleration  of  Christianity  was  not 
brought  forward  by  the  Chinese  commissioners  in  any  shape, 
for  it  was  a  point  upon  which  they  were  wholly  ignorant  as  a 
religious  question.  The  Russian  Minister  was  the  first  to  formu- 
late an  article  on  this  subject,  and  in  the  discussion  which  ensued 
as  to  his  draft  of  a  treaty  presented  to  the  Chinese  officials,  they 
are  said  to  have  expressed  their  willingness  to  allow  missionaries 
to  travel  through  the  country,  inasmuch  as  these  could  usually 
speak  the  language ;  they  opposed  a  like  permission  to  merchants, 
who  could  not  do  so,  as  this  ignorance  was  sure  to  breed 
trouble.  These  officials  knew  the  Russian  priests  in  Peking  to 
be  quiet,  industrious  men,  and  were  doubtless  willing  enough  to 
admit  them  to  further  privileges,  but  they  could  give  no  opinion 
on  the  general  toleration  of  Christianity,  for  they  knew  prac- 
tically nothing  of  its  peculiar  tenets. 

The  next  day  I  got  the  Chinese  text  of  this  article  and  drew 
up  a  similar  one  for  the  United  States  treaty,  leaving  out  the 
proviso  that  a  "  certain  number  of  missionaries "  would  be 
allowed,  and  inserting  the  two  names  of  Protestant  and  Roman 
Catholic  Churches,  so  as  to  bring  the  former  distinctly  before 
them  as  not  the  same  as  the  Roman  and  Greek  Churches ;  it 
was  otherwise  different  in  phraseology  but  not  in  spirit.  The 
night  before  the  treaty  was  signed,  a  note  was  sent  from  the 
Chinese,  rejecting  this  article  altogether,  on  the  ground  that 
Protestant  missionaries  had  their  families  with  them,  and  must 
be  restricted  to  the  open  ports;  the  inference  was  therefore  pretty 
plain  that  the  novelty  of  foreign  women  travelling  about  the 
country  had  presented  itself  to  their  minds  as  an  objection  to 
allowing  Americans  to  preach  Christianity.  As  soon  as  I  could 
do  so  I  drew  up  another  form  of  the  same  article,  and  started 
off  next  morning  to  lay  it  before  the  Imperial  Commissioners. 
It  was  quite  the  same  article  as  before,  but  they  accepted  it 
without  any  further  discussion  or  alteration ;  however,  the  word 
"  whoever  "  in  my  English  version  was  altered  by  Mr.  Reed  to 
"  any  person,  whether  citizen  of  the  United  States  or  Chinese 
convert,  who  " — because  he  wished  every  part  of  the  treaty  to 
refer  to  United  States  citizens,  and  cared  not  very  much  whether 
it  had  a  toleration  article  or  not.  I  did  care,  and  was  thankful 
to  God  that  it  was  inserted.  It  is  the  only  treaty  in  existence 
which  contains  the  royal  law.    I  have  always  regarded  the  present 


218  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

article  as  better  than  the  discarded  one;  that  in  the  British 
treaty  was  abridged  from  it,  and  I  understood  at  the  time  that 
it  would  not  have  been  inserted  if  ours  had  not  contained  such 
a  clause.  It  must  be  said,  moreover,  that  if  the  Chinese  had 
at  all  comprehended  what  was  involved  in  these  four  toleration 
articles,  they  would  never  have  signed  one  of  them.  In  the 
"  Chinese  Repository  "  you  will  find  a  partial  toleration  of  our 
religion  by  the  Emperor  Taokwang,  but  this  was  only  a  rescript 
and  did  not  carry  with  it  the  weight  of  a  treaty,  and  during 
the  fourteen  years  which  had  intervened  since  its  promulgation 
it  had  pretty  much  lost  its  effect. 

I  could  never  ascertain  who  had  a  hand  in  causing  the  rejec- 
tion of  my  first  form  of  the  article,  but  think  that  it  was  some 
one  connected  with  the  French  legation.  The  harsh  and  unjust 
criticisms  of  some  persons  on  these  articles  in  i860  was  only 
the  beginning  of  the  pulling  and  hauling  they  have  since  received ; 
but  it  is  much  easier  to  find  fault  and  overthrow  than  to  improve 
and  build  up.  Though  Christianity  does  not  depend  upon  treaties 
for  its  progress  and  power,  these  articles  have  proved  to  be  a 
check  upon  the  native  officials,  who  have  been  taught  therein 
not  to  destroy  what  they  did  not  approve.  I  thank  God  that 
the  Imperial  Government  was  thereby  bound  not  to  become  a 
persecuting  government,  as  it  has  more  than  once  since  wished 
to  be. 

Williams  never  regretted  his  action  in  the  matter.  Twenty 
years  after  the  adoption  of  the  treaties  he  wrote : 

The  articles  in  the  treaties  with  China  granting  toleration 
to  those  who  preach  and  those  who  accept  the  doctrines  of  the 
Bible,  and  allowing  the  public  exercise  of  their  faith,  have  already 
proved  to  be  a  great  protection  to  the  growing  Church.  It  is 
one  of  those  milestones  of  progress  which  indicate  the  advance 
made,  and  guide  that  advance  further  on  to  the  consummation 
of  the  Christianisation  of  the  whole  land.  The  difficulty  of  con- 
vincing the  converts  that  the  degree  of  toleration  granted  does 
not  release  them  from  their  allegiance  to  their  own  rulers,  has 
been  increased  of  late  years  by  a  kind  of  semi-protection  claimed 
by  Roman  Catholic  priests  to  appear  before  the  rulers  in  cases 
of  oppression  of  their  neophytes.  There  is,  indeed,  no  caste 
to  warn  people  off  from  its  peculiar  enclosure  nor  state  hier- 
archy or  bigoted  priesthood  to  forcibly  prevent  members  from 
leaving  it,  but  hindrances  to  the  promulgation  of  the  Gospel  are 
to  be  expected   as   the   renovating,   reorganising  nature   of  its 


MISSIONS  AND  POLITICS  219 

doctrines  are  better  understood,  and  the  rights  of  conscience 
are  more  strongly  asserted.  It  is  a  cause  of  great  thankfulness 
that  the  progress  of  the  faith  has  been  attended  with  so  few 
drawbacks,  persecutions,  and  causes  of  just  complaint  from 
either  party.  Three  Protestant  converts  have  already  yielded 
up  their  lives  rather  than  deny  their  Master;  and  others  have 
suffered  the  loss  of  all  things  at  the  hands  of  their  countrymen. 
The  reputation  of  these  converts  has  generally  been  good  as 
members  of  society.  I  was  once  talking  with  Wansiang,  the 
premier,  respecting  them,  and  told  him  that  I  had  never  known 
of  a  member  of  the  Yesu  kiao  having  been  condemned  before  the 
native  courts  for  any  crime,  and  he  said  he  had  not  heard  of  a 
case. 

No  aspect  of  missionary  work  in  China,  however,  has  called 
forth  more  discussion  and  criticism  from  friend  and  foe  of 
mission  work.  Foes  have  asserted  that  on  the  basis  of  this 
clause  missionaries  have  removed  native  Christians  from  the 
jurisdiction  of  Chinese  courts,  all  offences  of  such  Christians 
being  covered  by  the  allegation  of  persecution.  "  Suppose,"  says 
Sir  Hiram  Maxim,  a  zealous  antagonist  of  missions,  "  a  Chinese 
priest  should  visit  England  and  the  United  States,  and  it  should 
become  known  that  every  burglar,  pickpocket,  and  thief  could, 
by  becoming  a  Buddhist,  shield  himself  from  arrest  by  the  police, 
how  long  would  the  English  or  American  people  submit  to  such 
a  state  of  affairs?" — {Harper's  Weekly,  September  16,  1905.) 
Friends  of  missions  have  spoken  carefully,  but  strongly  on  the 
subject.  The  Congregational  deputation  to  China,  in  its  special 
report  on  China  to  the  Prudential  Committee  of  the  American 
Board  in  1907,  declares  its  conviction  that  the  toleration  clause 
was  unwise  and  injurious  in  its  effect.     It  says: 

The  treaties  between  China  and  the  Western  nations  gave 
a  degree  of  foreign  protection  to  Chinese  converts  to  Chris- 
tianity. This  established  a  state  of  things  unlike  that  prevailing 
in  any  other  country  which  has  been  the  field  of  foreign  mis- 
sionary endeavour.  It  is  now  generally  conceded  that  this  clause 
in  the  treaties  was  wholly  unwise,  and  in  the  end  has  been  most 
injurious  to  the  progress  of  Christianity  in  China.  It  has  thrown 
great  temptation  in  the  way  of  the  missionaries  and  of  the 
Chinese  people  themselves.    It  has  led  the  latter,  in  some  cases, 


220  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

to  pretend  conversion  for  the  sake  of  personal  advantage.  The 
missionary  on  his  part  has  been  led  to  confuse  his  office  as  a 
teacher  of  religion  with  that  of  the  representative  of  a  foreign 
political  power.  It  has  led  to  constant  deception  on  the  part 
of  the  Chinese  and  to  repeated  interventions  on  the  part  of 
missionaries  between  the  Chinese  Government  and  its  lawful 
subjects.  It  has  been  taken  advantage  of  by  foreign  powers  in 
the  most  flagrant  fashion  for  the  furthering  of  their  schemes 
for  territorial  aggrandisement.  It  is  a  just  cause  of  constant 
and  increasing  irritation  on  the  part  of  the  Chinese  Government 
and  people  toward  the  missionaries.  It  has  caused  an  endeavour 
which  should  have  no  aim  but  the  teaching  of  pure  religion  to 
be  confounded  in  the  minds  of  many  Chinese  with  the  political 
schemes  of  the  so-called  Christian  nations.  It  is  at  present  by 
far  the  greatest  ground  of  reproach  in  China  against  Christian 
missionaries. 

In  this  respect,  the  Roman  Catholic  missionaries  have  been 
the  greatest  offenders.  France,  until  the  recent  disestablishment 
of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  in  that  country,  has  been  the 
nation  most  active  in  the  protection  of  Chinese  converts.  A 
statement  issued  in  the  late  spring  of  this  year  by  the  Governor- 
General  of  Peking  and  others  high  in  authority,  over  their  own 
signature,  confirms  this  assertion  with  the  greatest  definiteness. 
But  it  is  deplorable  that  Protestant  missionaries  ever  permitted 
themselves  to  be  led  into  a  like  error.  The  way  was  thus  opened 
for  the  interpretation  of  any  lawsuit  of  which  a  Chinese  Chris- 
tian might  be  a  party  in  the  light  of  a  case  of  religious  persecu- 
tion. It  is  true  that  a  great  majority  of  our  missionaries  dis- 
countenance this  practice.  The  sentiment  prevails  throughout 
our  missions  that  it  is  high  time  that  intervention  of  any  sort 
on  the  part  of  missionaries  in  cases  involving  the  relations  of 
Chinese  subjects  to  the  court  or  to  their  government  should  be 
altogether  discontinued. 

Some  of  the  best  missionaries  in  China,  while  seeing  clearly 
the  abuses  and  misunderstandings  which  have  grown  up,  are 
not  clear  that  the  assertion  by  treaty  of  the  principle  of 
toleration  was  wholly  unwise  and  injurious.  Dr.  Gibson  has 
dealt  carefully  with  the  subject  in  "  Mission  Problems  and 
Mission  Methods  in  South  China  " : 

In  the  treaties  agreed  to  between  China  and  Western  powers, 
distinct  reference  was  made  to  the  subject  of  Christianity,  and 


MISSIONS  AND  POLITICS  221 

it  was  provided  that  under  these  treaties  there  should  be  com- 
plete freedom  for  the  propagation  or  practice  of  Christianity, 
both  on  the  part  of  natives  and  foreigners.  This  provision,  as 
well  as  the  natural  attitude  always  maintained  by  the  Chinese 
Government  towards  differing  religions,  has  secured  for  us  mar- 
vellous freedom  in  preaching  Christianity  in  all  parts  of  China; 
and  not  only  in  the  treaty  ports,  where  foreign  residence  is 
sanctioned,  but  in  all  the  cities,  towns,  and  country  districts  of 
the  Empire,  native  preachers  and  foreign  missionaries  alike  have 
complete  freedom  in  preaching  the  Gospel  and  gathering  Chris- 
tian worshippers ;  a  freedom,  perhaps,  which  is  more  complete 
than  that  which  is  enjoyed  in  any  other  part  of  the  globe.  Now 
it  is  under  such  conditions  as  these  I  have  described  that  the 
Christian  religion  has  been  preached  and  the  Christian  Church 
planted  in  China,  and  many  complicated  results  have  grown  out 
of  this  situation. 

The  toleration  clause  of  the  treaties  runs  as  follows :  "  The 
religions  of  the  Lord  of  heaven  and  of  Jesus  teach  men  to 
practise  virtue,  and  to  do  to  others  as  men  would  be  done  by, 
and  all  persons  shall  be  free  to  preach  and  practise  these  religions 
without  molestation  or  interference."  This  seems  to  secure  the 
right,  on  the  one  hand,  of  missionaries  to  preach  Christianity, 
and  the  right,  on  the  other,  of  Chinese  converts  to  follow  their 
teaching.  But  these  rights  are  not  precisely  defined,  nor  is 
any  definite  provision  made  for  securing  them ;  but  since  the 
clause  formed  part  of  an  international  arrangement  regulating 
the  respective  rights  of  Chinese  and  foreigners  in  their  relations 
with  each  other,  it  seemed  to  give  the  missionary  the  right, 
enjoyed  in  other  spheres  by  the  merchant,  of  appealing  to  his 
consul  in  all  cases  where  the  treaty  was  violated.  In  this  way 
the  missionary  was  constituted  in  some  sense  the  natural  pro- 
tector of  the  right  of  religious  toleration  conceded  to  Chinese 
subjects  by  their  own  government. 

It  is  no  easy  task  to  weigh  the  advantages  and  disadvantages 
of  this  arrangement.  We  are  profoundly  thankful  to  God  that 
in  His  providence  we  have  had  secured,  to  the  fullest,  recogni- 
tion of  our  right  to  preach  the  Gospel  throughout  the  Empire, 
and  to  enjoy  the  protection  of  the  law  for  life  and  property  in 
doing  so.  We  are  not  less  thankful  that  the  Church,  in  the 
days  of  its  weakness  and  inexperience,  is  spared  the  ordeal  of 
fiery  persecution  by  a  hostile  and  determined  government.  It 
is  a  marvellous  thing  that  every  Chinese  subject  who  hears 
the  Gospel,  under  the  peace  established  by  the  treaties,  has  his 
rights  recognised  to  worship  God  according  to  his  conscience. 


222  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

In  this  way  the  Church  has  been  to  a  large  extent  sheltered  dur- 
ing its  years  of  weakness,  and  the  time  has  been  given  for  its 
growth  in  numbers,  in  influence,  and  what  is  more  important, 
in  intelligent  comprehension  of  the  truth,  and  in  the  faith  and 
courage  which  spring  from  enlarged  experience  of  the  Christian 
life. 

But  these  great  gains  are  not  without  their  drawbacks.  In 
India  it  seems  undoubtedly  an  evil  that,  notwithstanding  the 
official  neutrality  of  the  British  Government,  it  yet  inevitably 
appears  to  the  native  mind  that  Christianity  comes  among  them 
backed  by  all  the  authority  and  influence  of  the  ruling  power. 
The  Hindu  hearer  of  the  Gospel,  belonging  to  a  race  that  is 
naturally  weak  and  pliant  as  compared  with  the  sturdy  independ- 
ence of  the  Chinese,  sees  that  the  keys  of  advancement  and  the 
springs  of  power  are  in  Christian  hands,  and  he  is  tempted  to 
seek  favour  by  compliance  with  the  religion  of  his  superiors, 
while  the  stronger  minds  may  be  driven  all  the  more  to  hold 
aloof.  In  China  it  is  a  distinct  advantage  that  those  who  profess 
Christianity  know  well  that  they  will  not  ingratiate  themselves 
with  the  Government  by  doing  so.  The  new  religion  is 
preached  by  despised  aliens,  and  those  who  follow  it  incur  a 
kind  of  social  ostracism  by  connecting  themselves  with  it. 
This  tends  to  deter  the  insincere  and  secure  the  purity  of  the 
Church. 

It  is,  therefore,  an  undeniable  disadvantage  that  another  set 
of  ideas  has  been  fostered  by  the  treaty  arrangements.  The  ill- 
defined  right  of  toleration  is  enjoyed  by  the  Christians  under 
pressure  from  foreign  governments.  They  thus  appear  to  stand 
apart  from  the  bulk  of  their  fellow-countrymen,  and  to  be  under 
a  foreign  protectorate. 

But  Dr.  Gibson's  mature  judgment  is  in  favour  of  the  "  Tol- 
eration Clause."  In  his  report  as  Chairman  of  the  Commission 
on  "  The  Chinese  Church  "  he  said  at  the  China  Centenary  Mis- 
sionary Conference : 

With  regard  to  the  question  whether  any  action  should  be 
taken  by  missionaries  for  the  protection  of  converts,  two  views 
are  held.  Some  argue  that  they  should  be  taught  to  look  for 
Divine  protection,  while  the  missionary  declines  to  give  any  aid. 
This  appears  to  me  to  resemble  too  closely  the  action  condemned 
in  James  ii :  15,  16,  to  be  a  safe  rule  of  action.  It  is  true  that 
God  can  give,  and  does  give,  protection  to  His  own,  but  it  by 


MISSIONS  AND  POLITICS  223 

no  means  follows  that  He  forbids  the  missionary  to  be  His 
agent  or  minister.  We  do  not  refuse  to  give  food  to  a  Christian 
in  time  of  famine  on  the  ground  that  God  will  care  for  His  own, 
and  that  the  righteous  will  not  be  left  to  beg  his  bread.  On  the 
contrary,  if  we  believe  that  protection  from  persecution  lies 
within  the  purposes  of  God's  providence,  it  is  extremely  probable 
that  we  are  the  agents  through  whom  He  will  give  it.  I  have 
no  doubt  that  there  are  cases  in  which  we  shall  fail  of  our  duty 
if  we  do  not  seek  to  save  Christian  people  from  lawless  violence. 
The  difficulty  is  to  distinguish  which  are  the  cases  in  which  we 
ought  to  interfere,  and  here  we  cannot  be  too  cautious.  We 
should  remember  in  every  instance  that  when  we  have  learned 
all  we  possibly  can,  we  have  never  heard  quite  the  whole  story, 
and  should  practise  caution  and  reserve  in  stating  our  case. 
We  should  also  remember  that  by  soliciting  official  interference 
it  is  possible  that  we  may  aggravate  a  temporary  difference  into 
a  permanent  hostility,  and  may  only  smooth  the  path  of  one  for 
the  moment  at  the  cost  of  permanently  hardening  a  whole  clan 
or  village  against  the  Gospel.  If  we  can  once  establish  a  char- 
acter for  fairness  and  integrity,  it  will  often  be  possible  to  have 
cases  of  "  persecution  "  settled  in  a  friendly  and  therefore  most 
effective  way  by  the  intervention  of  disinterested  persons  in  the 
neighbourhood.  When  this  can  be  done,  much  is  gained  in 
every  way. 

But  with  the  utmost  care  there  will  still  be  cases  in  which 
we  must  appeal  to  the  officials.  On  this  many  hard  things  have 
been  said  against  us  by  statesmen  and  public  writers.  We  are 
accused  of  establishing  a  "  protectorate  over  mission  converts." 
In  reply  to  this  it  is  enough  to  make  two  remarks. 

(1)  We  do  not  try  to  create  a  foreign  protectorate  outside 
of  the  Chinese  law  for  Christians.  We  only  ask  that  they  should 
not  be  outlawed.  It  is  not  we  but  our  opponents  and  critics 
who  forget  that  Christian  Chinese  are  still  Chinese  subjects. 
The  mandarins  forget  and  sometimes  furiously  deny  this,  and 
we  are  bound  to  remind  them  of  it.  The  "  protection  "  we  seek 
to  procure  for  converts  is  the  protection  of  the  Chinese  law. 
Both  we  and  our  critics  must  remember  that  we  do  not  even  ask 
for  "  justice,"  i.e.,  for  justice  after  the  high  standards  of  the 
West,  for  our  converts.  We  only  ask  that  they  should  receive 
the  same  kind  of  justice  or  injustice,  or  quaint  blend  of  the  two, 
which  the  Chinese  subjects  are  able  to  procure  from  their  tri- 
bunals. 

(2)  The  remedy  for  "  missionary  cases "  does  not  lie  in 
further  restrictions  upon  missionaries  or  Chinese  Christians,  but 


224        Christianity  and  the  nations 

in  the  impartial  enforcement  of  the  common  law  by  the  man- 
darins without  prejudice  or  partiality  on  the  ground  of  religion. 

It  is  certain  that  the  Chinese  officials  have  been  greatly 
troubled  in  mind  over  the  outworkings  of  the  toleration  clause. 
Their  main  troubles  have  come  from  the  Roman  Catholic  mis- 
sionaries, who  have  sought  and  used  a  political  status  also 
offered  to  and  openly  renounced  by  the  Protestant  missionaries, 
but  it  is  true  also  that  some  Protestant  missionaries  have  inter- 
fered in  Chinese  courts  in  behalf  of  Christians,  although  the 
practice  has  not  been  general  and  the  interference  has  in  almost 
every  case,  if  not  in  every  one,  been  because  the  missionary 
was  convinced  that  the  trouble  was  one  of  direct  or  indirect  per- 
secution. Dr.  Bergen  of  the  Shantung  Province  reported  some 
years  ago  that  he  had  asked  73  missionaries  as  to  their  prac- 
tice and  had  found  that  25  had  never  interfered  in  litigation  at 
all  and  48  had  not  applied  for  aid  to  the  Chinese  officials  more 
than  three  times  each.  The  Chinese  officials  as  a  rule,  however, 
would  be  glad  to  have  such  intervention  entirely  cease.  As 
one  Chinese  writes :  "  Notwithstanding  the  outward — perhaps 
real,  in  some  cases — kindly  disposition  of  the  Chinese  officials 
towards  the  missionaries  of  late  years,  they  as  a  class  still  con- 
sider the  latter  as  unavoidable  evils,  whom  they  must  try  to 
tolerate  with  as  minimum  sufferings  and  damages  as  possible. 
An  official  in  being  appointed  to  a  certain  place  nowadays  first 
of  all  inquires  not  about  the  '  temper  of  the  people,'  but  whether 
that  place  has  had  any  '  missionary  cases '  before,  and  if  so, 
he  must  think  that  he  has  got  into  a  bad  and  difficult  position." 
— (China's  Young  Men,  April,  1905,  Art.  "The  Missionary 
Question,"  p.  24.)  And  Viceroy  Tuan  Fang  in  New  York 
requested  the  missionary  societies  to  change  "  advise  against  "  to 
"  forbid  "  in  their  instructions  to  their  missionaries  in  China, 
discountenancing  interference  in  any  native  litigation  whatever. 

The  question  involved,  however,  is  a  much  larger  one  than 
this.  The  great  issue  is,  should  Christian  nations  seek  to  secure 
the  recognition  by  the  non-Christian  nations  of  the  principle  of 
religious  toleration?    If  they  regard  this  as  their  duty,  and  do  se- 


MISSIONS  AND  POLITICS  225 

cure  the  acceptance  of  this  principle  in  treaty  stipulations,  will  the 
results  be  injurious  to  the  missionary  enterprise?  If  toleration 
clauses  are  inserted  in  treaties,  how  can  the  possibilities  of  evil  be 
escaped,  and  what  should  be  the  policy  of  missionaries  toward 
the  duties  which  such  treaty  stipulations  create?  It  is  clear 
that  if  such  stipulations  are  entered  into,  they  should 
cover  simply  the  essential  principle  of  toleration,  and  those 
abuses  by  which  evil  men  take  shelter  in  the  Church  to  secure 
an  immunity  from  merited  punishment  should  be  avoided.  The 
language  of  the  new  American  treaty  of  1903,  already  quoted, 
defines  the  proper  limits  and  precautions.  It  might  have  been 
well,  some  would  say,  to  have  incorporated  such  language  in 
the  treaty  of  i860.  It  was  impossible.  No  one  had  sufficient 
foresight,  but  perhaps  the  treaty  of  1903  would  never  have  been 
if  the  treaty  of  i860  had  not  been  first.  It  is  possible  now 
to  define  the  rights  of  Chinese  Christians  by  treaty,  because  in 
i860  the  right  of  a  Chinese  Christianity  was  secured. 

The  fact,  however,  that  these  rights  of  Chinese  Christians 
are  secured  by  a  foreign  treaty  leaves  with  the  foreign  govern- 
ment and  those  on  whom  it  must  depend  for  its  knowledge  of 
facts  responsibilities  which  are  full  of  danger,  but  which  cannot 
on  that  account  be  ignored.  "  It  will  undoubtedly  simplify  the 
missionary's  course  in  many  cases,"  says  Dr.  Gibson,  "  to  have 
an  unalterable  rule  that  he  will  on  no  consideration  appeal  to 
the  foreign  consul  or  native  mandarin  for  the  protection  of 
Christian  converts;  but  solutions  of  such  extreme  simplicity  are 
seldom  the  right  ones.  We  cannot  dissociate  ourselves  from 
the  fact  that  we  are  members  of  a  nation  whose  Christian  civilisa- 
tion and  history  have  given  it,  in  common  with  other  Christian 
nations,  an  enormous  amount  of  power  and  influence.  The 
Chinese  Government,  under  pressure  of  this  power,  has  recog- 
nised what  is  in  itself  absolutely  and  indisputably  true,  that 
all  men,  and  the  Chinese  like  others,  have  an  inalienable  right 
to  follow  the  truth  and  to  worship  God  without  interference 
or  persecution.  In  the  providence  of  God  we  have,  willingly 
or  unwillingly,  become  to  the  Chinese  the  asserters  and  represent- 
atives of  this  undeniable  principle.     It  is  impossible  for  us  to 


226  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

divest  ourselves  of  this  character  and  to  assume  that  of  the 
earliest  preachers  of  Christianity,  when  it  was  a  proscribed 
faith  with  neither  wealth  nor  worldly  influence  behind  it,  still 
upon  its  trial  and  facing  without  support  the  whole  strength 
of  the  civilised  world." 

But  there  are  those  who  question  the  wisdom  of  making 
religious  toleration  a  matter  of  government  action.  But  why? 
We  hold  now  that  each  government  for  itself  should  establish 
the  principle  of  religious  liberty  as  a  constitutional  right  of  its 
people.  Well,  these  people  are  going  all  over  the  world.  Are 
they  not  to  enjoy  wherever  they  go  their  religious  freedom? 
How  are  they  to  do  it  unless  in  each  land  to  which  they  go 
their  government  follows  them  with  the  protection  of  its  extra- 
territorial jurisdiction,  or  unless  in  each  land  the  principle  of 
toleration  prevails?  How  is  it  to  be  brought  to  prevail  in  these 
lands,  save  by  international  influence?  And  this  right  of  re- 
ligious freedom  ought  to  belong  to  every  man,  not  to  Scotchmen 
and  Americans  in  China  and  Turkey,  but  to  Chinese  and  Turks 
also,  not  only  when  they  come  to  Scotland  and  America,  but 
when  they  are  at  home  in  their  own  lands.  We  believe  that  this 
proposition  should  be  laid  down  unequivocally,  that  it  is  the 
duty  of  the  enlightened  and  free  nations  to  secure  the  recog- 
nition of  the  right  of  religious  freedom  universally.  Mr.  Roose- 
velt held  this  view.  "  This  administration,"  he  declared  in  1904, 
in  his  letter  of  acceptance  of  his  renomination  to  the  Presidency 
of  the  United  States,  "  has  on  all  proper  occasions  given  clear 
expression  to  the  belief  of  the  American  people  that  discrimina- 
tion and  oppression  because  of  religion,  wherever  practised,  are 
acts  of  injustice  before  God  and  man ;  and  in  making  evident 
to  the  world  the  depth  of  American  conviction  in  this  regard, 
we  have  gone  to  the  very  limit  of  diplomatic  usage."  Govern- 
ments have  again  and  again  intervened  to  prevent  oppression 
and  injustice.  Europe  interfered  in  Bulgaria.  It  was  Europe's 
shame  that  she  did  not  interfere  in  Armenia.  America  inter- 
fered in  Cuba.  Great  Britain  interfered  in  Burmah.  If  it  is 
right  to  go  to  war  to  prevent  injustice,  it  is  right  to  seek  to 
prevent  it  in  advance  by  peaceful  treaty  agreements.     Religious 


MISSIONS  AND  POLITICS  227 

intolerance  and  persecution  are  wrongs  before  God  and  man. 
It  is  the  duty  of  Christian  nations  to  forestall  and  terminate 
such  wrongs.  They  do  what  it  is  right  to  do,  what  it  would 
be  wrong  not  to  do,  in  securing  for  all  men  the  benefits  of  full 
religious  toleration.  And  that  involves  on  their  part  action 
in  some  such  form  as  was  taken  in  the  case  of  China.  When 
it  was  clear  that  there  would  be  religious  intolerance  and  per- 
secution the  Western  nations  did  what  they  could  to  guard 
against  such  wrongs.  The  necessary  form  of  action  was  a  treaty 
guarantee  of  toleration  in  the  case  of  the  religion  for  which 
they  had  a  sense  of  responsibility,  and  which  was  likely  to  be 
the  victim. 

"  It  might,  perhaps,  be  arguable,"  said  the  Spectator  some 
years  ago,  "  that  missionaries  in  China  could  not  claim  the  pro- 
tection of  England,  supposing  they  were  breaking  the  law  of 
the  land  by  teaching  Christianity.  Personally,  we  hold  that 
there  is  a  good  deal  to  be  said  for  the  opinion  that  they  should 
be  protected  even  in  that  case,  or  in  other  words,  that  no 
Christian  state  should  recognise  the  right  of  a  semi-civilised 
power  to  exclude  the  entry  of  Christianity."  This  is  only  a 
corollary  of  the  general  principle  which  I  have  suggested,  namely, 
that  governments  are  right  in  taking  action  in  behalf  of  com- 
plete religious  toleration. 

The  United  States  made  representation  in  this  view  to  Japan 
in  the  years  before  Japan  had  embodied  the  principle  of  tolera- 
tion in  a  constitution.  When  the  country  was  opened  to 
foreigners,  "  it  appeared,"  as  Mr.  Foster  says,  "  that,  notwith- 
standing the  severe  measures  which  had  been  adopted  in  the 
seventeenth  century  for  the  suppression  of  the  '  evil  sect,'  a 
considerable  body  of  native  Christians — numbering  several  thou- 
sand— had  secretly  kept  their  faith,  and  the  changed  condition 
of  the  country  emboldened  them  to  make  themselves  known. 
This  awakened  the  hostility  of  the  government,  and  a  proclama- 
tion was  issued  by  the  Emperor  reviving  the  ancient  prohibitive 
decrees.  The  matter  came  to  the  notice  of  the  American  Min- 
ister. He  convoked  his  colleagues,  and  an  identic  note  of  pro- 
test was  agreed  upon  and  sent  to  the  Japanese  Government. 


228  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

"  On  receipt  of  the  proclamation  by  Secretary  Seward,  he 
replied  to  Mr.  Van  Valkenburgh  that  the  President  '  regards 
the  proclamation  as  not  merely  ill-judged,  but  as  injurious  and 
offensive  to  the  United  States  and  to  all  other  Christian  states, 
and  as  directly  conflicting  with  the  eighth  article  of  the  treaty 
of  1858,  and  no  less  in  conflict  with  the  tolerating  spirit  and 
principles  which  prevail  throughout  the  world.  You  are  advised, 
therefore,  that  the  United  States  cannot  acquiesce  in  or  submit 
to  the  Mikado's  proclamation.'  The  minister  was  instructed  to 
bring  the  matter  quietly  and  in  a  friendly  manner  to  the  atten- 
tion of  the  Japanese  Government,  in  view  of  the  civil  disturb- 
ances, but  to  '  proceed  with  firmness  and  without  practising  in- 
jurious hesitation  or  accepting  any  abasing  compromise.'  The 
other  treaty  Powers  adopted  the  same  course,  but  not  until  after 
much  discussion  and  delay  on  the  part  of  the  Japanese  Govern- 
ment did  the  persecution  cease  and  were  all  the  prohibitions 
against  Christianity  revoked." — (Foster,  "American  Diplomacy 
in  the  Orient,"  p.  200  f.) 

Similar  representations  have  been  made  by  the  European 
powers  to  Turkey.  In  1853,  when  the  British  and  French  fleets 
were  in  the  Turkish  waters  for  the  protection  of  Turkey,  "  a 
young  man  was  judicially  condemned  to  death  and  publicly 
executed  in  Adrianople,  by  the  Ottoman  authorities,  for  the 
crime  of  having  apostatised  from  Islam  to  Christianity.  He 
had  openly  declared  that  Christ  was  the  true  Prophet,  and  that, 
having  Him,  he  had  no  need  of  Mohammed,  who  therefore  was 
a  false  Prophet.  He  was  cast  into  prison  and  cruelly  tortured 
to  induce  him  to  recant,  but  in  vain.  On  being  beheaded,  he 
exclaimed  with  his  last  breath,  -  I  profess  Jesus  Christ,  and  for 
Him  I  die.'  On  September  17,  1855,  tne  Earl  of  Clarendon, 
Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs,  wrote  to  Lord  Stratford  de  Red- 
cliffe,  the  British  Ambassador  at  Constantinople :  '  The  Christian 
Powers,  who  are  making  gigantic  efforts  and  submitting  to 
enormous  sacrifices,  to  save  the  Turkish  Empire  from  ruin  and 
destruction,  cannot  permit  the  continuance  of  a  law  in  Turkey, 
which  is  not  only  a  standing  insult  to  them,  but  a  source  of 
cruel  persecution  to  their  co-religionists,  which  they  never  can 


MISSIONS  AND  POLITICS  229 

consent  to  perpetuate  by  the  successes  of  their  fleets  and  armies. 
They  are  entitled  to  demand,  and  Her  Majesty's  Government  do 
distinctly  demand,  that  no  punishment  whatever  shall  attach  to 
the  Mahometan  who  becomes  a  Christian.'  The  same  noble 
language  of  Christian  patriotism  had  also  been  held  earlier  by 
the  Earl  of  Aberdeen,  who  wrote  to  Sir  Stratford  Canning  on 
January  16,  1844:  'The  Christian  Powers  will  not  endure  that 
the  Porte  should  insult  and  trample  on  their  faith,  by  treating 
as  a  criminal  any  person  who  embraces  it.'  The  intention  was 
to  induce  the  Porte  to  renounce  and  abrogate  the  law  in  ques- 
tion. But  the  spirited  correspondence  with  the  Turkish  Govern- 
ment, even  under  those  exceptionally  favourable  circumstances, 
led  to  no  greater  result  than  that,  early  in  the  year  1856,  a 
Memorandum  was  agreed  upon  containing  these  words :  '  As  all 
forms  of  religion  are  and  shall  be  freely  professed  in  the  Otto- 
man dominions,  no  subject  of  His  Majesty  the  Sultan  shall  be 
hindered  in  the  exercise  of  the  religion  that  he  professes,  nor 
shall  be  in  any  way  annoyed  on  this  account.  None  shall  be 
compelled  to  change  their  religion.'  The  discovery  had  been 
made  that  the  objectionable  law,  being  regarded  as  invested 
with  a  divine  character,  could  not  be  annulled  or  abrogated  by 
any  human  authority  whatsoever.  Therefore,  the  British  Am- 
bassador considered  it  best  to  advise  his  Government  to  be 
content  with  the  aforementioned  clause,  saying  in  his  despatch 
to  the  Earl  of  Clarendom,  dated  February  12,  1856:  'The  law 
of  the  Koran  is  not  abolished,  it  is  true,  respecting  renegades, 
and  the  Sultan's  ministers  affirm  that  such  a  stretch  of  authority 
would  exceed  even  His  Majesty's  legal  powers.  But,  however 
that  may  be,  the  practical  application  of  it  is  renounced  by 
means  of  a  public  document,  and  Her  Majesty's  Government 
would  at  any  time  be  justified  in  complaining  of  a  breach  of 
engagement  if  the  Porte  were  to  authorise  or  to  permit  any  ex- 
ception to  its  own  official  declaration.'  " — (Koelle,  "  Mohammed 
and  Mohammedanism,"  p.  474.) 

In  the  Treaty  of  Berlin,  into  which  England,  Austria,  Russia, 
France,  Italy,  and  Turkey  entered  in  1878,  it  is  declared  in 
Article  2  that  complete  religious  liberty  is  to  exist  in  the  various 


230  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

territories  mentioned  in  the  preceding  article,  "  including  the 
whole  Turkish  Empire."  The  62d  article  begins :  "  The  Sublime 
Porte,  having  expressed  its  willingness  to  maintain  the  principle 
of  religious  liberty  and  to  give  it  the  widest  sphere,  the  con- 
tracting parties  take  cognisance  of  this  spontaneous  declaration." 
The  work  of  the  West  in  this  matter  is  not  ended,  however. 
"  In  spite  of  the  reiterated  declarations,"  says  Dr.  Barton,  "  it 
is  evident  that  the  Turkish  Government  does  not  and  never  did 
intend  to  acknowledge  the  right  of  a  Moslem  to  become  a  Chris- 
tian. A  high  official  once  told  the  writer  that  Turkey  gives 
to  all  her  subjects  the  widest  religious  liberty.  He  said:  '  There 
is  the  fullest  liberty  for  the  Armenian  to  become  a  Catholic, 
for  the  Greek  to  become  an  Armenian,  for  the  Catholics  and 
Armenians  to  become  Greeks,  for  any  one  of  them  to  become 
Protestant,  or  for  all  to  become  Mohammedans.  There  is  the 
fullest  and  completest  religious  liberty  for  all  the  subjects  of 
this  empire.'  In  response  to  the  question,  '  How  about  liberty 
for  the  Mohammedan  to  become  a  Christian  ? '  he  replied :  '  That 
is  an  impossibility  in  the  nature  of  the  case.  When  one  has 
once  accepted  Islam  and  become  a  follower  of  the  Prophet  he 
cannot  change.  There  is  no  power  on  earth  that  can  change 
him.  Whatever  he  may  say  or  claim  cannot  alter  the  fact  that 
he  is  a  Moslem  still,  and  must  always  be  such.  It  is,  therefore, 
an  absurdity  to  say  that  a  Moslem  has  the  privilege  of  changing 
his  religion,  for  to  do  so  is  beyond  his  power.'  For  the  last 
forty  years  the  actions  of  the  official  and  influential  Turks  have 
borne  out  this  theory  of  religious  liberty  in  the  Ottoman  Empire. 
Every  Moslem  showing  interest  in  Christian  things  takes  his 
life  in  his  hands.  No  protection  can  be  afforded  him  against 
the  false  charges  that  begin  at  once  to  multiply.  His  only  safety 
lies  in  flight." — (Barton,  "Daybreak  in  Turkey,"  p.  256  ff.) 

Now,  apart  altogether  from  the  interests  of  the  missionary 
movement,  we  believe  that  it  is  wrong  for  the  Christian 
nations  to  allow  Turkey  to  deny  to  her  Moslem  subjects  the 
right  to  become  Christians,  or  to  kill  men,  women,  and  children 
as  was  done  in  the  Armenian  massacres,  whose  only  crime  was 
Christ.     It  may  be  said  in  reply  that  the  Turkish  Empire  is 


MISSIONS  AND  POLITICS  231 

a  Moslem  state,  and  that  the  conversion  of  Moslems  to  Chris- 
tianity would  destroy  the  character  of  the  state.  Undoubtedly 
it  would  transform  it.  But  all  religions  should  be  free  to  appeal 
to  men,  provided  they  do  not  assail  the  moral  axioms  of  life, 
as  no  religion  can  which  will  command  the  assent  of  men  in 
a  free  society.  And  only  those  institutions  ought  to  be  free 
to  endure  which  can  command  the  loyalty  of  free  men.  It 
is  not  the  duty  of  the  Western  nations  to  annihilate  one  an- 
other's nationality  or  the  nationality  of  the  non-Christian  nations, 
but  it  is  their  duty  to  demand  that  the  human  spirit  in  all  lands 
shall  be  free  to  think  its  own  thoughts  and  pursue  its  own 
worship  of  God. 

But  now  to  turn  to  our  last  question,  it  is  asked,  does  not 
all  this  confusion  of  missions  and  politics,  of  the  duties  of 
governments  with  the  work  of  Christianity,  hopelessly  entangle 
the  missionary  movement,  defile  its  purity,  paralyse  its  spiritual 
strength,  and  frustrate  its  aim? 

We  reply,  first,  that  it  is  inevitable,  and  as  governments  im- 
prove is  certain  to  increase;  second,  that  it  is  assuredly  fraught 
with  danger  and  the  possibilities  of  disaster;  and  third,  that 
it  is  the  confusion  of  an  era  of  construction  in  which  by  diverse 
and  entangled  forces  God  is  building  His  kingdom  among  men. 

It  is  inevitable.  I  have  already  spoken  of  the  impossibility 
of  separating  the  missionary  and  his  movement  from  the  con- 
ditions in  which  alone  they  could  originate  and  under  which 
alone  they  can  operate.  The  missionary  movement  is  in- 
evitable, and  stripped  as  you  please  to  strip  it,  it  remains  an 
effort  on  the  part  of  Western  men  to  carry  a  religion  which 
has  become  domesticated  in  the  West  to  the  East  to  secure 
its  domestication  in  life  there.  The  problem  is  inevitably  a 
problem  of  man's  organised  life,  that  is  of  politics. 

And  the  confusion  will  increase  because  the  Western  nations 
are  to  act  increasingly  together  in  a  spirit  of  unselfish  service. 
They  are  to  take  over  more  and  more  distinctively  missionary 
duties.  No  one  can  travel  through  the  great  sections  of  the 
world  neglected  and  undeveloped  by  incompetent  peoples,  with- 
out realising  the  validity  of  the  moral  basis  on  which,  as  Pro- 


232  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

fessor  Reinsch  has  said,  political  expansion  is  justified  by  its 
advocates,  even  if  one  doubts  whether  expansion  is  the  one 
necessary  implication,  the  claim,  namely,  "  that  large  portions 
of  the  earth's  surface  are  in  the  hands  of  nations  or  tribes  who 
are  guilty  of  an  under-development  of  their  natural  resources. 
As  the  world  becomes  more  and  more  densely  populated, — so 
runs  the  argument, — the  natural  wealth  of  the  remoter  regions 
must  be  utilised  for  the  benefit  of  mankind,  and  if  any  nation 
or  tribe,  by  the  use  of  antiquated  methods  of  production,  or 
by  total  neglect  of  certain  parts  of  its  resources,  such  as  mines 
or  forests,  stands  in  the  way  of  this  great  need,  that  nation  or 
tribe  must  pass  under  the  political  power  or  tutelage  of  a  nation 
that  will  draw  from  the  earth  the  utmost  quantity  of  produce. 
At  any  rate,  the  world  must  be  policed,  so  that  in  every  part 
of  it  investments  of  capital  may  be  made  securely,  and  so  that 
industrial  works  may  be  carried  on  without  annoyance  or  mo- 
lestation from  the  natives.  Few  nations,  however,  stop  with 
this  demand.  Most  of  them  frankly  regard  the  world  as  the 
inheritance  of  the  most  powerful  races,  which  have  a  right  to 
replace  those  that  are  more  barbarous  or  less  well  endowed  with 
force  of  mind  and  character.  An  advocate  of  radical  methods 
of  colonisation  says :  *  It  is  an  inexorable  law  of  progress  that 
inferior  races  are  made  for  the  purpose  of  serving  the  superior ; 
and  if  they  refuse  to  serve,  they  are  fatally  condemned  to  dis- 
appear.'"— (Reinsch,  "World  Politics,"  p.  n.)  In  a  foot- 
note Professor  Reinsch  adds  the  less  selfish  theory  held  by 
German  historians  like  Mommsen,  Sybel,  Ranke,  and  Von  Hoist 
that  the  superior  nations  have  the  mission  to  civilise  the  inferior, 
if  necessary,  by  force.  Without  the  pressure  of  a  just  and 
peaceful  political  constraint,  Vambery  holds,  the  regeneration 
of  the  Moslem  world  is  impossible.  The  world's  interest  in  it- 
self is  to  increase  steadily,  and  the  relation  of  politics  to  the 
work  of  missions  is  to  grow  more  intricate,  whether  missionaries 
will  or  no. 

And  as  the  Western  nations  enter  with  increasing  intimacy 
and  responsibility  into  the  life  of  other  nations,  they  will  in- 
creasingly ask  themselves,  "  What  are  our  duties  to  the  nations  ? 


MISSIONS  AND  POLITICS  233 

Are  they  merely  governmental  or  commercial?  Have  we  not 
intellectual  and  moral  responsibilities  also  ? "  And  these  ques- 
tions bring  these  nations  and  their  representatives  face  to  face 
with  their  governmental  religious  responsibility.  On  this  point 
but  two  things  need  be  said,  each  of  which  will  indicate  the  cer- 
tainty of  increasing  relationship  between  the  political  and  the 
religious  missions  of  the  West  to  the  East.  One  is  that,  just 
as  the  missionary  inevitably  has  a  political  message  wrapped 
up  in  his  mission  and  his  Gospel,  so  the  statesman  or  the 
merchant  has  a  religious  message,  which  he  delivers  in  spite 
of  himself,  for  or  against  Christ  and  the  aim  which  the  mis- 
sionary serves.  The  men  whom  the  West  sends  out  will  in- 
creasingly be  men  of  the  best  type  of  the  past — men  like  Town- 
send  Harris,  one  of  the  most  useful  diplomatists  of  the  last 
century,  who  records  in  his  diary  during  the  negotiations  with 
Japan  which  resulted  in  the  treaty  of  1858 :  "  I  shall  be  both 
proud  and  happy  if  I  can  be  the  humble  means  of  once  more 
opening  Japan  to  the  blessed  rule  of  Christianity  " ;  like  the 
Punjab  statesmen  of  the  school  of  the  Lawrences,  who  believed 
in  Christ  and  openly  confessed  and  served  Him.  Such  men 
identifying  themselves  with  the  missionaries  and  sympathising 
with  and  advancing  their  aim  will  further  confuse  missions  and 
politics.  The  other  point  to  be  noted  is  that,  as  light  breaks  on 
the  difficult  problem  of  Church  and  State  at  home,  and  our 
governments  become  in  a  deeper  and  more  real  sense  Christian, 
they  will  express  their  Christian  character  in  their  relations  to 
other  nations.  If  our  governments  are  purely  secular,  of  course 
they  can  have  none  but  a  secular  message  to  utter;  but  if,  as 
we  believe,  they  are  or  are  meant  to  be  in  a  noble  sense  religious 
and  Christian,  then  their  Christian  character  will  find  utterance 
as  the  Christian  character  of  John  Lawrence's  Government  did 
in  the  Punjab.  In  so  far  as  our  Western  nations  become  truly 
Christian  and  act  consistently  with  their  character,  the  confusion 
of  religion  and  politics  is  likely  to  increase  in  a  way  for  which 
we  ardently  pray. 

But  the  political  entanglements  of  missions  with  politics  have 
often  been,  and  will  continue  to  be,  an  embarrassment  abroad. 


234  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

The  story  of  our  relations  with  the  backward  nations  is  not 
all  a  good  story,  and  we  shall  not  escape  "  the  nemesis,"  as 
Professor  Moore  calls  it,  "  of  the  connection  between  the  mission 
work  and  national  ambitions,  international  complications,  and 
race  agitations,  commercial  exploitations,  and  what  not.  .  .  . 
In  a  far  higher  degree  than  we  really  have  been  responsible 
for  them  we  shall  be  complicated  in  the  issues.  For,  having 
once,  even  only  in  a  left-handed  way,  profited  by  these,  or  only 
not  sufficiently  rebuked  by  them,  we  shall  have  with  our  own 
right  hand  to  pay  the  bill." — (Harvard  Theological  Review,  July, 
1908,  p.  260.)  "So  your  religion  is  a  part  of  your  Western 
life?"  we  are  told  the  Chinese  will  say  to  us.  "Well,  we  do 
not  want  your  civilisation  or  anything  that  enters  into  it." 
Mr.  Dickinson  told  us  this  charmingly  in  his  impersonation  of 
"  A  Chinese  Official."  Well,  we  must  take  whatever  comes  to 
us,  and  for  our  part  we  mourn  all  the  wrong  and  injustice  and 
selfishness  and  immorality  of  our  relation  with  Asia  and  Africa, 
but  we  do  believe  that  the  missionary  movement  has  protested 
against  these,  and  we  believe  also  that  Asia  and  Africa  make 
more  discrimination  than  we  suppose,  and  that  in  the  mercy  of 
God  the  evil  that  has  been  done  will  not  be  as  long  remembered 
as  men  fear,  and  that  the  flareback  of  the  unavoidable  connec- 
tion of  missions  with  politics  springing  from  the  real,  even  if 
chaotic  and  contradictory  unity  of  our  outward  movement,  may 
not  be  destructive  or  permanently  injurious. 

We  can  leave  the  consequences  of  all  such  confusion  to  God 
if  our  own  motive  is  pure  and  we  cling  with  loyal  fidelity  to 
our  distinct  aim.  If  missionaries  and  their  movement  by  what 
they  are  and  do  act  only  in  love  and  sacrifice,  asking  nothing 
and  giving  all,  if  they  teach  those  whom  they  reach  the  truth 
of  Christ  and  to  live  as  the  disciples  of  Christ,  if  they  steadily 
keep  before  themselves  and  the  new  Churches  the  great  fact 
that  Christianity  is  not  a  religion  of  the  missionaries  of  the 
West,  but  that  the  missionaries  of  the  West  are  the  bearers  of 
a  religion  that  is  all  men's  and  every  nation's, — then  the  con- 
fusions of  which  we  have  spoken,  which  are  either  desirable 
or  inevitable,  or  both,  will  work  out  in  the  end,  with  whatever 


MISSIONS  AND  POLITICS  235 

unavoidable  patience  and  pain,  the  plan  of  the  Eternal  One 
Who  governs  all.  The  use  of  great  national  forces  will  be 
seen  to  have  been  part  of  God's  plan.  A  good  man  rejoiced  in 
an  article  in  The  Churchman  of  September  18,  1900,  in  the  midst 
of  the  Boxer  troubles,  that  in  the  early  centuries,  "  from  the  days 
of  Nero  down,"  "  there  were  no  Christian  powers  to  deflower  and 
degrade  the  purity  of  Christianity,  and  no  Christian  flag  to  wrap 
around  and  conceal  the  Cross."  But  we  will  rejoice  that  steadily, 
though  all  too  slowly,  the  principles  of  the  Gospel  have  wrought 
their  way  into  the  life  of  the  world,  and  that  by  many  agencies, 
though  by  none  so  purely  as  by  the  enterprise  of  foreign  mis- 
sions, itself  we  recognise  so  imperfect  and  incomplete,  the  new 
age  of  true  peace  and  justice  comes,  that  new  age  which 

Stands  as  yet 
Half  built  against  the  sky 
Open  to  every  threat 

Of  storms  that  clamour  by. 
While  scaffolding  veils  the  walls 
And  dim  dust  floats  and  falls 

As  moving  to  and  fro  their  tasks  the  masons  ply. 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NON-CHRIS- 
TIAN   RELIGIONS 


V 

CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NON-CHRISTIAN 
RELIGIONS 

THE  missionary  movement  springs  from  the  conviction 
that  Christianity  is  the  universal  religion,  that  it  is 
meant  for  every  man  and  needed  by  every  man.  This 
conviction  involves  the  belief  that  Christianity  is  superior  to 
the  non-Christian  religions.  Some  of  them  claim  to  be  au- 
thoritative and  sufficient  for  special  peoples,  and  others  claim, 
like  Christianity,  to  be  universal.  Christianity  contests  all  these 
claims  when  it  sets  forth  on  the  foreign  missionary  enterprise, 
offering  itself  as  better  than  all  other  religions  for  all  men  and 
for  every  man.  This  contention  of  Christianity  must  be  reason- 
ably supported.  A  religion  cannot  claim  to  be  universal  and 
expect  its  claim  to  sustain  itself. 

Each  believer  in  Christianity  must  have  rational  grounds  for 
his  faith.  If  the  mere  fact  that  his  fathers  were  Christians, 
and  that  Christianity  is  the  prevailing  religion  in  his  country, 
are  the  reasons  for  his  Christian  belief,  then  he  must  allow  that 
the  Mohammedans  and  Hindus  have  equally  good  reason  for 
rejecting  Christianity  in  favour  of  their  own  religions.  If  he 
believes  in  the  Bible  as  the  Word  of  God  because  it  appears 
to  make  that  claim  for  itself,  and  in  Christianity  because  its 
preachers  confidently  affirm  its  truth,  then  he  cannot  complain 
if  others  urge  similar  grounds  for  loyalty  to  other  religions  and 
other  sacred  books.  In  early  years  a  child  will  hold  his  religion 
on  such  grounds  as  these,  and  men  and  women  whose  lives 
involve  no  intellectual  problems  may  believe  as  children  believe. 
But  the  great  mass  of  men  and  women,  if  they  are  to  believe 
their  religion  truly  and  do  its  work  in  the  world,  must  know 

239 


24o  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

why  they  believe  it,  independently  of  tradition  and  authority. 
In  the  Christian  lands  such  knowledge  may  not  necessitate  a 
comparison  of  Christianity  with  the  other  religions  of  the  world. 
The  glory  of  Christianity  is  that  it  offers  itself  to  human  ex- 
perience to  be  tested,  and  that  it  is  prepared  to  present  to  the 
mind  the  grounds  in  history  and  in  experience  and  in  reason 
on  which  its  claims  to  supreme  authority  rest.  It  has  absolute 
proofs,  which  do  not  require  comparison  with  the  contentions 
of  all  other  religions  before  they  may  be  accepted.  And  it  has 
been,  and  will  continue  to  be,  those  who  personally  know  God 
in  Christ,  and  who  have  such  an  indisputable  experience  as 
well  as  a  rational  assurance  of  the  truth  of  Christianity,  who 
will  go  out  as  its  missionaries. 

But  even  at  home  the  possibility  of  cherishing  a  Christian 
faith  without  a  comparison  of  Christianity  with  other  religions 
becomes  less  and  less.  We  find  that  there  are  adherents  of 
other  religions  who  claim  for  them  the  power  to  satisfy  the 
needs  of  the  soul,  and  who  argue  for  the  validity  and  sufficiency 
of  their  religions  as  against  Christianity.  There  are  many  people 
about  us  who  are  disturbed  by  these  claims.  We  can  only  assure 
them  rationally.  We  cannot  do  so  by  mere  denunciation  or 
denial.  Furthermore,  what  comparison  we  have  thus  far  made 
so  powerfully  confirms  our  Christian  faith  that  we  are  sure 
to  make  increasing  use  of  the  results  of  the  comparative  study 
of  religions  for  the  vindication  of  Christianity  in  the  home 
lands. 

And  in  the  contention  that  perhaps,  after  all,  our  religion 
is  not  final,  that  we  have  been  misled  regarding  it,  as  millions 
of  people  have  been  misled  regarding  other  religions;  that  our 
historic  Christianity,  after  all,  is  only  a  phase,  a  stage  in  the 
religious  evolution  of  humanity,  some  of  us  can  only  assure 
ourselves,  and  some  of  us  who  are  undisturbed  by  such  con- 
tentions can  only  convince  others,  through  the  actual  study  and 
comparison  of  all  the  religious  thought  and  life  of  man. 

In  the  foreign  field,  assuredly,  the  comparison  of  Christianity 
with  the  non-Christian  religions  is  inevitable.  It  is  precisely 
what  the  missionary  enterprise  invites.     It  cannot  expect  the 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  241 

people  to  whom  it  goes  at  once  to  abandon  their  own  religions 
and  to  accept  a  new  one  on  the  mere  fiat  of  the  missionaries. 
What  it  seeks  is  intelligent  and  living  faith.  That  involves  the 
examination  of  the  new  and  its  comparison  with  the  old.  The 
new,  indeed,  can  only  be  stated  intelligibly  in  language  asso- 
ciated with  the  old,  and  by  the  use  of  ideas  created  or  preserved 
by  the  old.  Every  wise  activity  of  the  missionary  movement 
involves  a  knowledge  of  the  non-Christian  religions  and  of 
their  relations  to  Christianity.  The  offer  of  Christianity  to  men 
can  only  be  made  effectively  by  men  who  have  compared  it  with 
other  religions,  and  its  offer  is  itself  an  invitation  to  set  it  in 
such  comparison. 

The  missionary  enterprise  has  made  this  comparison.  The 
West  has  only  begun  to  talk  of  comparative  religion  during  the 
last  generation,  but  the  missionary  enterprise  has  been  studying 
it  for  a  hundred  years.  It  does  not  pretend  to  say  that  it  has 
approached  the  subject  with  an  empty  mind,  with  no  preconcep- 
tions. No  one  can  do  this,  and  if  any  one  could  he  would  be 
utterly  disqualified  for  the  study.  It  is  a  study  of  religion. 
A  blind  man  might  as  well  be  set  to  comparing  colours  as  a 
man  without  religion  to  comparing  religions.  Missionaries  have 
gone  out  to  the  foreign  field  with  the  most  positive  and  definite 
convictions,  but  they  have  not  been  disqualified  thereby  from 
studying  justly  the  religious  problem.  No  men  have  been  better 
qualified.  They  are  the  best  experts  in  the  world  on  Christianity, 
and  the  love  which  has  carried  them  on  their  mission  makes 
them  the  most  sympathetic  students  of  the  religions  to  which 
they  go.  Some  of  them  are  accused  of  being  intolerant,  and 
they  see  enough  to  make  them  so,  but  the  spirit  of  the  enter- 
prise is  the  spirit  of  such  men  as  the  late  Dr.  Faber  of  China, 
or  of  the  present  Bishop  of  Lahore.  "  It  is  my  purpose  to 
investigate  scientifically  the  Chinese  religion,"  wrote  Dr.  Faber 
in  his  "  Introduction  to  the  Science  of  Chinese  Religion."  "  Such 
an  undertaking  is  different  from  a  description  of  the  religious 
practices  of  the  present  times.  Religion  has  in  China,  as  every- 
where, its  history.  We  shall  have  to  trace,  as  far  as  possible, 
every  religious  practice  to  its  origin,  show  the  connection  be- 


242  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

tween  the  present  and  the  past,  and  explain,  as  far  as  possible, 
the  symbolical  forms  from  their  original  ideas,  which  they  too 
often  have  only  preserved  in  a  petrified  state.  I,  as  a  mission- 
ary, want  to  understand  the  religious  state  and  condition  of  the 
people  I  have  to  deal  with."  "  It  has  been  my  effort,"  writes 
Bishop  Lefroy  in  speaking  of  the  Mohammedans  of  Lahore,  "  to 
enter  as  much  as  possible  into  their  thoughts — understand  as 
intelligently  and  sympathetically  their  creed,  and  look  out  at  least 
as  much  for  its  good  side  and  strong  points  as  for  its  blots  and 
weaknesses.  I  need  scarcely  urge — for  it  is  now  becoming  gen- 
erally recognised — that  some  such  attitude  as  this  is  alone  either 
worthy  of  our  own  faith,  based  as  it  is  on  the  true  light  which 
lighted  every  man  coming  into  the  world,  or  in  any  degree  likely 
to  win  those  for  whom  we  yearn,  and  enable  them  to  find  in 
Christ  the  satisfaction  of  all  the  deepest  needs  of  their  own  souls, 
the  way  by  which  they  can  come  home  to  their  Father." — (Cam- 
bridge Mission,  Occasional  Paper  No.  21 ,  p.  3.) 

It  may  be  said  that  this  attitude  of  the  missionary  enter- 
prise is  not  open-minded  and  judicial,  that  for  it  the  issue  is 
already  closed,  and  that  its  study  of  the  non-Christian  religions 
is  merely  for  the  purpose  of  making  its  propaganda  effective. 
Most  assuredly  foreign  missions  are  not  an  enterprise  of  enquiry 
for  a  true  religion,  an  expression  of  uncertainty  of  faith.  Mis- 
sionaries are  not  hunting  for  truth  which  they  have  not.  They 
are  offering  truth  which  they  believe  they  have.  They  do  not 
regard  themselves  as  omniscient,  but  they  do  regard  their  re- 
ligion as  all-sufficient,  and  they  are  seeking  to  communicate  it 
to  all  mankind.  But  this  does  not  incapacitate  them  for  seeing 
facts.  And  they  and  their  enterprise  know  the  facts  about  the 
non-Christian  religions.  They  know  them  better  than  the  ad- 
herents and  teachers  of  these  religions  know  them.  Dr.  Barton 
says  that  when  he  was  in  India  "  a  Hindu  high  priest  was 
showing  him  through  one  of  their  important  temples.  An 
American  missionary  was  in  the  company.  The  priest  spoke 
English  easily,  and  was  voluble  in  his  talk.  Early  in  his  con- 
versation he  was  describing  one  of  the  gods  before  whom  we 
stood,  when  the  missionary  most  adroitly  and  kindly  asked  him 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  243 

if  he  was  not  confusing  the  name  of  the  god  he  was  describing 
with  one  standing  several  feet  away.  He  hesitated  a  moment, 
said  the  missionary  was  right,  and  then  went  on  correctly.  Fre- 
quently after  that  he  consulted  the  missionary  openly  in  regard 
to  an  idol,  or  a  legend,  or  some  principle  of  Hinduism.  Quietly 
he  said  to  the  writer  during  the  hour  in  the  temple :  '  These 
missionaries  study  our  religion  more  thoroughly  than  the  most 
of  us  do,  and  so  come  to  know  it  much  more  accurately.'  "  For 
most  of  its  knowledge  of  the  non-Christian  religions  and  peoples 
the  West  is  indebted  to  missionaries.  "  I  would  ask  you,"  wrote 
Dr.  R.  E.  Hume  to  Vivakananda,  "  what  body  of  foreigners 
understand  and  sympathise  with  Indians  better  than,  or  as  well 
as,  missionaries?  What  body  of  foreigners  speak  the  vernacular 
as  well  ? "  It  is  true  that  the  missionary  enterprise  represents 
a  judgment  already  passed  upon  the  issue  of  comparative  re- 
ligion. We  purpose  to  show  now  what  that  judgment  is,  and 
that  it  is  reasonable  and  just,  and  what  in  view  of  it  the  attitude 
of  the  missionary  movement  to  the  non-Christian  religions  should 
be. 

It  is  to  be  said,  at  the  outset,  that  any  comparison  on  which 
such  a  judgment  rests  must  be  honest  and  fair.  It  must  not 
compare  what  is  best  in  Christianity  with  what  is  worst  in  the 
non-Christian  religions.  It  must  not  charge  as  results  of  any 
religion  conditions  which  exist  in  spite  of  it.  It  must  be  fair  in 
its  selection  of  witnesses.  It  must  appreciate  the  point  of  view 
of  the  other  side.  It  must  get  at  the  facts,  and  it  must  face 
them  all.  It  is  preposterous  to  propose  that  only  the  favourable 
facts  are  to  be  considered.  Christians  especially  must  be  charita- 
ble in  their  judgments  of  other  religions  as  of  other  men,  but 
they  are  false  and  not  charitable  if  they  deliberately  leave  out 
some  of  the  facts  on  which  a  true  judgment  must  be  based. 
It  is  especially  important  that  the  things  to  be  compared  be 
clearly  defined.  We  have  to  begin  by  understanding  distinctly 
just  what  Christianity  is,  and  just  what  each  of  the  religions 
to  be  compared  with  it  is  also.  We  shall  come  to  the  latter 
before  we  get  through,  but  what  do  we  mean  by  Christianity? 
We  do  not  mean  what  is  called  Christian  civilisation.     So  far 


244  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

as  Western  civilisation  is  the  product  of  Christianity  it  enters 
into  the  account,  just  as  Buddhist  and  Confucianist  and  Hindu 
and  Mohammedan  civilisation  enter  in,  so  far,  and  only  so  far, 
as  these  civilisations  or  any  elements  of  them  are  the  products 
of  those  religions.  But  we  refuse  to  identify  Christianity  with 
Occidental  civilisation.  We  do  not  mean  the  creeds  and  Churches 
of  Christendom,  nor  its  development  of  doctrine,  nor  the  po- 
litical powers  that  are  called  Christian,  nor  the  social  and  in- 
dustrial institutions  of  Western  nations.  We  mean  by  Chris- 
tianity the  Christianity  of  the  New  Testament.  And  we  under- 
stand by  that  the  living  offer  of  the  Father  God  to  men  in 
Christ,  and  that  reaffirmation  or  new  revelation  of  the  eternal 
and  universal  principles  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  which  the  New 
Testament  enshrines.  That  men  differ  widely  as  to  what  all 
this  means  and  involves  goes  without  saying,  but  for  the  pur- 
pose of  comparing  Christianity  with  the  non-Christian  religions 
it  is  sufficient  to  set  down  on  the  side  of  Christianity  that  in 
which  Christian  men  are  agreed.  On  the  other  side,  we  would 
set  the  non-Christian  religions,  likewise  essentially  denned. 
Then  the  contrast  must  be  between  these  and  their  effects  on 
the  lives  of  the  men  who  hold  them,  the  society  which  they  con- 
trol and  inspire,  and  all  the  fruitage  that  they  bear.  In  such 
a  comparison,  if  fully  made,  we  would  measure  the  Christian 
conception  of  God,  of  man,  of  life,  of  ethics,  of  society,  of  sin, 
of  salvation,  of  time,  and  of  eternity  over  against  the  concep- 
tions of  the  non-Christian  religions;  the  power  and  influence  of 
the  Christian  religion  to  realise  its  ideals,  to  mould  life,  to  per- 
petuate and  propagate  itself,  over  against  the  power  and  in- 
fluence of  the  other  religions,  and  we  would  come  to  results 
which  we  can  describe  only  in  part,  and  which  pour  a  new  yearn- 
ing into  the  missionary  motive  and  run  a  new  resolution  as  firm 
as  the  dutiful  will  of  Christ  into  the  missionary  duty. 

But  before  we  define  these  results,  we  will  not  conceal  from 
ourselves  the  fact  that  many  others,  either  with  or  without  any 
actual  comparison  of  the  world's  religions,  hold  varying  views 
of  them. 

i.  Some  few  have  found  this  or  that  Eastern  religion  more 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  245 

satisfactory  than  they  found  Christianity.  Thus  Schopenhauer 
declared  his  joy  and  contentment  in  the  Upanishads  of  Hindu- 
ism :  "  Oh,  how  thoroughly  is  the  mind  here  washed  clean  of 
all  early  engrafted  Jewish  superstitions,  and  of  all  philosophy 
that  cringes  before  those  superstitions !  In  the  whole  world 
there  is  no  study  except  that  of  the  originals,  so  beneficial  and 
so  elevating  as  that  of  the  Upanishads.  It  has  been  the  solace 
of  my  life;  it  will  be  the  solace  of  my  death." — (Quoted  by 
Sukumar  Haldar  in  "  Hinduism,"  p.  64,  described  in  the  ad- 
vertisement on  the  cover  as  "  an  effectual  vindication  of  Hindu- 
ism on  the  strength  (1)  of  the  Hindu  shastras  and  sages,  and 
(2)  of  the  writings  of  European  savants,  such  as  Jones,  Cole- 
brooke,  Max  Miiller,  Schopenhauer,  Bjornstjerna,  Wilson,  El- 
phinstone,  Heeren,  Tod,  Niebuhr,  Muir,  Arnold,  Pococke,  Mau- 
rice, Ward,  Kennedy,  Schlegel,  Cunningham,  Buckle,  Cotton, 
and  others.") 

2.  Others  have  started  with  or  come  to  the  view  that  each 
people  has  its  own  suitable  religion,  the  outgrowth  of  its  own 
life,  and  best  adapted  to  its  needs.  Mr.  Bosworth  Smith  holds 
that  "  missionaries  will  no  doubt  be  found  to  acquiesce  in  what 
seems  the  will  of  Providence,  that  a  national  religion  is  as  much 
part  of  a  man's  nature  as  the  genius  of  his  language  or  the 
colour  of  his  skin." — (Lectures  on  "  Mohammedanism,"  2d  ed., 
p.  68.)  And  Mr.  Scawen  Blunt  says  that  "  while  admitting  the 
eternal  truth  of  Christianity  for  ourselves,  we  may  be  tempted 
to  hold  that,  in  the  Arabian  mind,  if  in  no  other,  Islam  too 
may  prove  eternal." — ("  The  Future  of  Islam,"  pp.  142,  172.) 
And  especially  do  we  hear  this  view  set  forth  to-day  in  behalf 
of  Hinduism.  "  Let  us  be  friends,"  writes  a  Hindu  to  the  Amer- 
ican public  in  a  leading  magazine,  "  and  as  children  of  one 
God  forget  all  differences  of  opinion.  You  have  your  religion, 
and  you  think  it  best.  If  it  is  the  best,  keep  it  to  yourselves. 
But  do  not  revile  other  religions.  As  for  faults,  other  religions 
have  faults,  but  so  has  your  own.  Let  us  pray  Him  whom  you 
call  God  and  I  call  Brahma,  to  send  us  enlightenment  and  make 
us  love  each  other  without  consideration  of  caste  and  creed. 
But  I  assure  you  that  you  cannot  thrust  a  new  religion  on  an 


246  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

already  civilised  nation,  whose  religion  is  the  cradle  of  religions ; 
where  the  people  are  born  to  their  religion  and  it  is  fostered 
through  generations.  .  .  .  Christianity  is  best  suited  to  the 
Western  nations.  As  a  religion  we  do  not  show  disrespect  to 
it,  because  every  religion  tends  toward  the  same  end,  namely, 
salvation.  ...  In  the  present  Hindu  religion  one  can  find  all 
the  essential  elements  of  all  other  religions.  .  .  .  The  Hindus 
regard  it  as  impregnable  and  everlasting.  To  preach  Christianity 
to  the  Hindu,  who  had  a  religion  and  was  civilised  before  the 
dawn  of  history,  seems  to  him,  therefore,  the  most  ridiculous 
things  on  earth — indeed,  audacious." — (The  Forum,  1894, pp. 489. 
483,  art.  by  Purushatam  Rao  Telang,  on  "  Christian  Missions 
as  Seen  by  a  Brahman.")  And  this  is  the  view  which  Mrs. 
Besant  puts  forth  with  her  remarkable  eloquence  with  the  ap- 
proval of  the  leaders  of  modern  Hindu  thought.  It  was  the 
dominant  principle  of  her  address  on  "  Hindu  Social  Reform  on 
National  Lines  "  at  the  Madras  meeting  of  the  Hindu  Associa- 
tion in  1903 : 

The  Hindu  Association  intends  to  promote  Hindu  social  and 
religious  advancement  on  national  lines  in  harmony  with  the 
spirit  of  Hindu  civilisation.  There  is  the  distinguishing  mark. 
While  we  have  quarrelled  with  none,  while  we  have  harsh  words 
for  none,  while  we  have  condemnation  for  none,  we  yet  claim 
our  duty  to  choose  the  path  which,  we  believe,  leads  best  to 
our  goal,  and  that  path  is  a  national  path  and  not  a  foreign  one, 
is  one  of  Hindu  civilisation  and  not  of  Western  civilisation — 
(hear,  hear) — is  one  in  which,  while  we  will  take  from  the  West 
everything  that  is  useful,  that  can  enrich  our  knowledge  and 
enlarge  our  hearts,  we  will  take  nothing  that  despiritualises  India, 
nothing  that  denationalises  India,  nothing  that  makes  her  simply 
a  copy  instead  of  a  divine  original.  We  do  not  want  a  plant  of 
exotic  growth  that  will  wither  before  the  Indian  sun  and  will 
be  torn  up  by  the  Indian  storm ;  we  want  the  plant  of  Hindu 
growth  and  of  Hindu  root,  that  grows  stronger  when  the  Hindu 
sun  blazes  upon  it  and  is  able  to  resist  the  tornado  as  well  as 
the  tropical  heat.  (Cheers.)  No  reform  is  lasting,  no  change 
is  permanent  which  is  not  based  on  the  traditions  of  the  nation 
and  in  accordance  with  the  genius  of  the  people.  I  am  not 
condemning  Western  ways,   Western   traditions,   Western  cus- 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  247 

toms.  Were  I  in  England  I  should  tell  them  to  base  their  in- 
stitutions on  English  history,  English  genius,  English  thought; 
but  in  India  I  claim  the  same  right  of  originality  for  the  Indian 
nation  to  base  her  growth  on  Indian  traditions  and  to  build  in 
accordance  with  Indian  architecture.  A  house  is  not  well  built 
which  is  a  mixture  of  every  style  of  building;  here  a  bit  from 
the  architecture  of  England  and  there  a  scrap  that  comes  from 
China;  here  a  doorway  that  has  a  Mussulman  stamp  on  it,  and 
there  a  turret  that  recalls  an  English  cathedral  spire.  Build  your 
temple  as  a  Hindu  temple,  and  then  it  will  stand;  but  if  you 
build  into  it  scraps  of  the  architecture  of  every  other  religion, 
you  will  have  a  grotesque  anachronism  and  not  a  national  build- 
ing.  .    .    . 

Then  we  come  to  the  religious  education  of  Hindu  boys  and 
girls  in  all  Hindu  schools  and  colleges.  How  vital  that  is  you 
can  see  if  you  look  round  you.  Why,  only  yesterday  I  stood 
face  to  face  with  a  Brahmana,  of  high  social  position,  of  high 
intellectual  equipment,  who,  trained  in  a  Jesuit  college  by  the 
carelessness  of  those  responsible  for  his  training,  is  on  the  verge 
of  renouncing  his  ancestral  religion  and  embracing  Christian 
faith.  (Cries  of  "  Shame.")  Shame;  but  shame  to  whom?  To 
that  young  man  (cheers),  to  that  young  man  who,  placed  as  a 
boy,  plastic  and  helpless,  in  the  hands  of  the  Jesuit  teachers,  has 
been  moulded  like  plastic  clay  by  their  fingers  and  taken  every 
sophism  that  they  present  to  him  as  truth  direct  from  the  mouth 
of  God,  or  shame  to  those  who  place  plastic  minds  in  the  hands 
of  the  Jesuit  and  the  foreigner?  And  shame,  most  of  all,  not 
to  the  one  man  who  sent  his  son  to  that  fatal  influence,  but  to 
the  whole  community  which  has  been  indifferent  (cheers)  to  its 
ancestral  faith,  and  cared  not  whether  its  boys  lost  or  kept  their 
religion  provided  they  gained  the  Western  veneer  which  was 
sufficient  for  the  gaining  of  a  livelihood.  I  do  not  blame  Western 
veneer;  I  do  not  want  you  not  to  educate  your  sons  on  Western 
lines.  That  is  necessary  in  the  present  condition  of  India.  But 
why,  at  the  same  time,  not  give  them  Hindu  religious  and  moral 
education?  Why  not  place  within  their  reach  the  priceless 
treasures  that  the  past  has  bequeathed  ?  By  all  means  give  them 
the  jewels  of  Western  learning;  why  should  they  not  be  en- 
riched by  them?  But  do  not  deprive  them  of  the  diadem,  the 
diamond  of  the  Eastern  faith  in  which  all  colours  are  found, 
blended  into  one  pure  ray  of  light,  that  diadem  of  Hinduism 
which  is  your  priceless  heirloom,  and  which  India  cannot  afford 
to  lose.   .    .    . 

There  is  no  nation  greater  than  India  on  the  face  of  the 


248  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

world.  India  has  a  right  and  a  duty  in  the  civilisation  of  the 
future ;  she  is  not  simply  to  repeat  the  modern  notes  of  younger 
nations ;  she  has  to  sound  out  her  own  mighty  note  which  belongs 
to  her  among  the  nations  of  the  world,  and  this  not  only  for 
your  interest  but  for  the  interests  of  the  Empire  and  for  the 
interests  of  the  world  at  large.  Unless  you  keep  your  own 
national  characteristics,  unless  you  preserve  your  religion,  unless 
you  walk  along  the  road  that  suits  the  national  genius,  India  has 
no  national  future  in  the  building  of  the  coming  civilisation. 

This  view,  not  without  elements  of  truth  in  the  case  of  some 
religions  which  we  must  recognise,  is  set  forth  boldly  even  in 
defence  of  fetichism  and  savage  religions.  We  are  bidden  not 
to  disturb  the  primitive  races  in  their  noble  simplicity,  which  can- 
not bear  the  burden  of  the  more  advanced  faith.  This  idea  we 
may  as  well  dismiss  in  passing  with  the  authoritative  testimony 
of  one  who  lived  among  them  and  whose  associate,  James  Chal- 
mers, was  eaten  by  them.  "  We  hear  of  the  noble  savage,"  says 
Dr.  Lawes,  "  disturbed  in  the  quiet  of  his  simple,  primitive  life ; 
but  during  the  whole  course  of  my  missionary  career  I  have 
never  met  a  noble  savage.  He  exists  only  in  the  minds  of  novel- 
ists and  romancers.  He  is  lascivious,  crafty,  quarrelsome,  and 
selfish,  and  nothing  can  change  him  but  the  power  of  the  Gos- 
pel."—  (The  British  Weekly,  May  16,  1901.) 

3.  The  view  which  we  have  been  considering  is  given  a  much 
nobler  form  by  some  who  see  in  each  religion  God's  effort  to 
reveal  Himself  to  men. 

A  little  here,  again  a  little  there, 

In  varying  measures,  and  in  sundry  ways 

For  men  of  different  ages,  various  climes. 

God  hath  withdrawn  the  veil  that  hides  His  face, 

Lest  any  man  should  say,  "  God  grudged  me  light, 

And  grudging  light,  denied  the  Hope  of  Life." 

Another  poet  sets  forth  melodiously  the  same  thought: 

God  sends  His  teachers  unto  every  age, 
To  every  clime  and  every  race  of  men, 
With  revelation  fitted  to  their  growth 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  249 

And  shape  of  mind,  nor  gives  the  realm  of  truth 
Unto  the  selfish  rule  of  one  sole  race: 
Therefore  each  form  of  worship  that  hath  swayed 
The  life  of  men  and  given  it  to  grasp 
The  master  key  of  knowledge,  reverence, 
Infolds  some  germs  of  goodness  and  of  right; 
Else  never  had  the  eager  soul  which  loathes 
The  slothful  down  of  pampered  ignorance, 
Found  in  it  even  a  moment's  fitful  rest. 


A  missionary  in  China  has  earnestly  set  forth  the  same  view. 
"  All  the  great  historic  religions  of  the  world  are  not  only  the 
product  of  seekers  after  God,  but,  as  the  same  sun  shines  in 
Asia  as  in  Europe,  so  it  is  the  same  Spirit  of  God  which  moves 
Arabs,  Hindus,  and  Chinese  prophets  and  sages  to  write  down 
that  with  which  they  believe  God's  Spirit  has  inspired  them,  for 
Jesus  Christ  lighteth  every  man  that  cometh  into  the  world." 
A  Hindu  writer  in  The  Epiphany  goes  somewhat  further: 
"  Christianity  is  not  the  only  way  revealed  by  God,  but  Hinduism 
is  also  the  way  to  God.  The  religion  (whatever  it  may  be)  which 
is  best  makes  us  closest  to  Him.  Hinduism,  which  is  an  ancient 
religion,  is  as  good  a  religion  as  Christianity  itself,  because  if  it 
be  not  good  it  is  utterly  impossible  for  it  to  stand  on  its  own  legs 
for  so  many  days  in  Asia  and  other  parts  of  the  world  in  the 
midst  of  calamities  and  darkness,  under  the  tyranny  of  ancient 
kings,  and  when  other  religions  by  its  side  were  rising  and 
declining  and  trying  the  match  with  it." — (The  Epiphany,  Jan- 
uary 23,  1909.) 

Under  this  view  some  hold  that  all  that  is  necessary  is  that 
each  man  should  be  faithful  and  conscientious  in  following  his 
own  light.  But  the  light  is  darkness  with  some  men.  "  Tell 
us  what  Hinduism  is  and  is  not,"  the  Cambridge  missionaries 
reply  to  the  writer  in  The  Epiphany.  "  A  Hindu  has  said  that 
Hinduism  offers  protection  to  the  drunkard,  the  lascivious,  the 
liar,  and  the  thug,  for  each  of  whom  it  prescribes  a  particular 
kind  of  spirituality,  giving  sanction  to  deeds  of  darkness."  Ro- 
man Catholicism  has  extended  similar  shelter  in  some  lands.  It 
has  done  so  in  Mexico.     But  the  men  who  are  faithful  to  such 


250  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

lights  are  not  worthy  of  praise.  Conscientiousness  is  no  proof 
of  truth  or  righteousness.  Conscience  can  be  as  depraved  as 
desire.  Others  under  this  view  hold  that  other  revelations  are 
superior  to  the  Christian  revelation.  That  is  the  foundation 
contention  of  Islam  and  Vedantism  and  also  of  the  New 
Buddhism,  which,  however,  talks  in  the  terms  of  philosophy  and 
not  of  revelation. —  (The  Japan  Daily  Mail,  March  31,  1892; 
Art.  "  The  New  Buddhism.")  Others  still  hold  this  view  as  part 
of  a  larger  thought  of  God's  education  of  the  human  race,  seeing 
in  the  non-Christian  religions  either  God's  present  school  for  the 
non-Christian  peoples  or  His  past  schoolmasters  to  bring  them  to 
Christ.  Some  set  forth  this  conception  with  a  carelessness  which 
justifies  Dr.  Ashmore's  vigorous  reply  that  it  "makes  Christ  the 
author  of  heathenism  as  He  is  of  Christianity.  .  .  .  According 
to  that,  God,  who  was  receiving  with  compliance  the  sweet  smell 
that  rose  from  the  camp  in  the  wilderness,  was,  at  the  same  time, 
beholding  with  pleasure  the  sacrifices  of  Moloch  in  the  valley 
of  the  son  of  Hinnom.  The  same  holy  Spirit  that  was  moving 
Elijah  on  one  side  of  Carmel  to  declare  that  Jehovah  He  is 
God,  was  at  the  same  time  impelling  the  priests  of  Baal  to  gash 
themselves  with  knives  and  declare  that  Baal  he  is  God  on 
the  other  side  of  the  plain.  .  .  .  Because  there  are  some  virtues 
woven  into  heathenism,  it  does  not  follow  that  God  made 
heathenism.  God  made  gold,  but  He  did  not  work  it  up  into 
graven  images.  God  made  grain,  but  He  did  not  make  it  into 
whiskey.  God  made  the  natural  virtues,  but  He  did  not  organise 
them  into  Confucian  and  Shintu  systems  of  ancestor  worship 
and  king  worship."  Undoubtedly,  God  has  not  forsaken  any 
part  of  this  world,  and  He  has  been  educating  mankind,  but 
that  does  not  entitle  us  to  charge  to  Him  all  that  has  found 
a  place  in  the  life  and  thought  of  men.  We  are  bound  to  exempt 
God  from  responsibility  for  whatever  is  morally  discordant  with 
His  character.  The  problem  of  the  divine  education  of  the  hu- 
man race  is  still  unsolved  (Faber,  "  The  Science  of  Chinese 
Religion,"  p.  149),  and  what  we  have  to  deal  with  to-day  are 
the  simple  facts  of  the  world.  What  religions  are  actually  ac- 
quainting men  with  the  character  of  God  to-day  and  making 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  251 

them  sons  of  God  and  bringing  forth  the  fruits  of  the  Spirit 
of  God?    This  is  our  practical  question. 

4.  A  fourth  view  of  the  world's  religions,  including  Chris- 
tianity, reduces  them  all  to  mere  ethnic  superstitions,  which 
humanity  should  outgrow,  and  upon  whose  decay  the  hope  of 
human  progress  rests.  Vambery  asserts  that  the  decline  of 
the  Mohammedan  world  was  due  to  its  devotion  to  religion, 
and  that  the  progress  of  Japan  is  due  to  its  repudiation  of 
religion : 

The  evil  results  of  the  existing  relationship  between  Church 
and  State  are  now  beginning  to  be  realised  by  the  Mohammedans 
themselves.  A  learned  mollah  from  India  writes  me  on  this 
subject  as  follows:  "The  Church  and  State  have  been  allies 
in  Christian  Europe,  and  the  subjection  of  the  people  has  been 
the  policy  of  both.  What  is  the  condition  of  priest-ridden  coun- 
tries like  Spain?  It  is  true  that  the  mollahs  are  the  allies  of 
the  tyrannical  Moslem  rulers.  But,  fortunately,  there  is  no 
priesthood  in  Islam.  ...  If  Europe  can  become  civilised  and 
progressive  in  spite  of  the  absurd  dogmas  of  Christianity,  there 
is  every  hope  of  regeneration  and  renaissance  of  Moslem  Asia, 
for  the  dogmas  of  Islam  are  less  absurd  and  less  rigid  than  those 
of  Christianity.  The  alliance  between  Church  and  State  rests 
in  Islam  merely  on  an  act  of  violence  which  has  to  be  removed 
first  of  all." 

That  we  are  right  in  attributing  the  decline  of  the  Islamic 
world  to  the  tyranny  and  the  overmastering  power  of  religion 
is  best  proved  by  the  marvellous  advance  made  by  Japan.  When 
the  Japanese,  although  in  many  social  and  political  points  pre- 
serving a  severely  Asiatic  character,  have,  as  by  the  act  of  a 
Deus  ex  machina,  become  Europeanised ;  have  accepted  our 
sciences,  our  arts,  our  form  of  government,  and  our  manner  of 
thought;  this  is  because  they  were  indifferent  in  matters  of 
religion — in  fact,  are  practically  atheists.  The  national  religion, 
Shintoism,  is  not  a  religion  at  all,  but  merely  an  apotheosis  of 
heroes,  kings,  ancestors,  and  the  powers  of  Nature  culminating  in 
the  precept,  "  Follow  thy  natural  inclination,  and  obey  the  com- 
mandments." The  Japanese  who  is  at  all  educated  laughs  at 
religion  in  general  and  wonders  how  it  can  continue  in  Western 
lands.  The  spirit  of  liberalism  which  prevails  in  Japan  excludes 
all  possibility  of  despotism.  The  present  Emperor,  Mutsuhito, 
was  in  no  way  restricted  when  in  1888  he  gave  his  people  a 


252  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

constitution.  No  Divine  command,  no  prophetic  word,  prevented 
him  from  accepting  or  imitating  the  good  he  found  in  the  ad- 
ministrations of  Western  lands.  The  Japanese  recognise  no 
Kafirs  and  no  heathen,  whom  it  is  their  duty  to  hate  and  to 
despise,  as  is  the  case  amongst  pious  Christians  and  Mussulmans. 
In  the  same  proportion  as  he  keeps  at  a  safe  distance  from  the 
narrow  world  of  faith,  he  is  able  to  get  nearer  to  the  light  of 
liberty  and  progress.  The  latest  history  of  Japan  contains  a 
solemn  word  of  warning  for  all  Islamic  nations. 

India  is  reading  history  in  the  same  way.  A  writer  in  the 
Kay  as  t  ha  Samachar  calls  upon  his  countrymen  to  learn  the  lesson 
that  religion  has  ceased  to  influence  politics  outside  the  Islamic 
world,  and  that  Japan's  regeneration  has  been  effected  by  states- 
men and  not  by  priests;  that  if  we  want  to  rise  in  the  scale 
of  nations  we  must  discard  the  thousand  castes  and  creeds 
which  are  raising  their  hydra  heads  around  us  everywhere  and 
adopt  the  one  comprehensive  eternal  religion  of  Fatherland. 
(Kayastha  Samachar,  August,  1902,  p.  136;  Art.  "The  Japanese 
Renaissance.")  "  The  Americans,"  says  a  Hindu  writer,  "  are 
the  most  progressive  nation,  and  have  in  some  respects  left  the 
European  nations  behind,  because  they  have  not  been  hampered 
with  religion.  .  .  .  Religious  superstition  has  been  the  curse  of 
India." — (The  Forum,  September,  1894,  p.  95;  Art.  by  Vir- 
chand  F.  Gandhi,  "  Home  Life  in  India.")  In  too  many  lands 
the  superficial  comparison  of  religions  is  leading  men  to  discard 
all  religion  and  to  lose  the  religious  sentiment. 

5.  A  more  common  view  is  that  all  religions  are  funda- 
mentally the  same.  Leaders  of  the  non-Christian  religions  have 
taken  up  this  position.  It  was  authoritatively  expressed  in  a 
careful  statement  addressed  to  "  our  revered  ecclesiastical 
brethren  in  the  world  "  by  the  heads  of  the  six  sects  allied  in 
the  "  Great  Japan  Buddhists'  Union  "  in  the  year  1900.  "  It 
is,  indeed,  certain,"  said  these  leaders  of  Japanese  Buddhism, 
"  that  the  forms  of  religion  in  the  world  are  manifold.  But  it 
is  equally  certain  that  in  spite  of  the  dissimilarity  of  religions 
in  their  tenets,  as  well  as  in  rites — in  short,  in  their  external 
organisation — the  fundamental  principles  embodied  in  what  we 
regard  as  the  higher  classes  of  religion,  to  say  nothing  of  those 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  253 

which  still  remain  undeveloped,  are  in  all  cases  essentially,  if 
not  entirely,  analagous." — (Report  of  Eighth  Conference  of  For- 
eign Mission  Boards  of  United  States  and  Canada,  1901,  p.  yj.) 
This  is  now  a  very  common  view,  both  in  the  East  and  the 
West.  Natural  religion  is  assumed  to  be  all  that  is  really  essen- 
tial, and  it  is  taken  for  granted  that  this  is  the  fundamental 
thing  in  each  of  the  great  religions  entering  into  our  comparison. 
But  this  assumption  is  erroneous.  (See  Goreh,  "  The  Supposed 
and  Real  Doctrines  of  Hinduism,  as  held  by  educated  Hindus, 
with  the  True  Source  of  the  Former.").  Natural  religion  is 
not  the  common  substance  of  all  these  religions.  Hinduism 
"  denies  the  very  existence  of  natural  religion."  Logically,  as 
Dr.  Kellogg  points  out,  it  does  away  with  morality  entirely, 
because:  (1)  It  makes  God  the  author  equally  of  sin  and 
righteousness,  truth  and  falsehood.  (2)  Because  it  regards 
existence  in  the  world  as  an  evil  consequent  upon  a  life  of 
virtue,  no  less  than  a  life  of  vice.  All  actions  are,  therefore,  alike 
evil.  (3)  It  destroys  all  human  responsibility,  in  that  it  affirms 
that  in  all  things  man  acts,  not  freely,  but  under  the  compulsion 
of  an  inevitable  necessity.  (Kellogg,  "  Hinduism,"  a  sermon, 
Mirzapore  Orphan  School  Press,  1876,  p.  17.)  What  is  com- 
mon to  all  the  religions  of  the  world  is  simply  the  religious 
sentiment,  with  its  evidence  of  the  deep  religious  needs  of  men. 
There  is  no  common  idea  of  God  or  of  morals,  of  sin  or  of 
righteousness,  of  man,  or  of  truth.  "  The  non-essential  parts 
of  religions  differ,  but  the  essentials  agree,"  says  a  Hindu  apolo- 
gist. "  What  are  the  essentials  ? "  he  asks,  and  answers,  "  Self- 
control  and  self-knowledge."  But  all  religions  do  not  agree  in 
this  point,  and  even  if  they  did  verbally,  they  do  not  agree  as 
to  what  the  "  self  "  is,  or  how  it  is  to  be  controlled,  or  for  what 
purpose,  or  what  it  can  know,  or  what  knowledge  is.  The  re- 
ligions of  the  world  do  not  even  agree  as  to  what  religion  is, 
or  what  the  world  is,  and  some  of  them  affirm  that  nothing 
is,  or  that  the  end  of  life  is  that  nothing  should  be.  The  only 
point  in  which  the  religions  of  the  world  are  agreed  is  that 
men  need  a  religion,  although  Singhalese  Buddhism  denies  even 
this,  but  as  to  what  is  meant  by  religion,  and  what  that  religion 


254  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

should  be,  and  where  it  is  to  be  found,  and  what  use  is  to  be 
made  of  it,  they  are  not  agreed.  The  religions  of  the  world,  in 
a  word,  start  from  the  same  point  in  response  to  the  same  deep 
human  need.    That  is  all.    They  travel  nowhither  all  together. 

6.  Still  another  view,  differing  from  those  we  have  con- 
sidered, is  that  what  each  religion  needs  is  simply  to  modify 
itself  in  accordance  with  the  new  requirements  of  life,  borrow- 
ing from  other  religions  what  elements  it  may  need,  but  that 
it  should  not  consider  conversion  or  surrender  to  any  other  re- 
ligion. We  behold  to-day  the  great  non-Christian  religions 
undergoing  this  transformation  and  taking  this  attitude.  The  old 
idea  that  the  non-Christian  religions  were  immovable,  and  that 
the  work  of  Christian  missions  beat  upon  them  with  impotent 
futility,  has  had  to  be  given  up.  "  The  ancient  faiths,"  said 
the  late  Dr.  Cuthbert  Hall  upon  his  last  return  from  India, 
"are  in  process  of  readjustment  to  new  conditions,  and  are 
assimilating  religious  elements  of  Western  thought,  and  using 
the  product  thus  assimilated  as  a  means  of  self-defence  against 
Christianity." — (New  York  Observer,  October  21,  1907.)  Mr. 
Slater  in  "  The  Higher  Hinduism "  has  described  for  us  the 
changes  which  are  taking  place  in  Hinduism  in  this  way,  holding 
as  a  Christian  man  must  to  the  most  hopeful  view  of  the  out- 
come, while  he  yet  foresees  the  increased  difficulties  which  the 
transformation  is  to  bring. 

At  the  bottom  of  the  "  Hindu  revival  "  and  of  all  the  present 
restlessness  and  ill-feeling  towards  Christianity,  is  the  patriotic 
desire  to  preserve  the  integrity  of  Bharata  Kanda,  the  ancient 
land  of  spirituality.  As  formerly  in  Japan,  so  in  India  now, 
Christianity  and  Christians  are  chiefly  disliked  because  these 
terms  appear  to  be  synonymous  with  whatever  is  opposed  to  the 
honour  and  independence  of  the  nation.  Every  movement  in 
India  that  would  insure  success  must  ally  itself  with  this  senti- 
ment of  nationality ;  hence  the  greater  success  of  the  Arya  Samaj 
movement,  which  is  based  on  Indian  lines,  than  of  the  Brahmo 
Samaj,  which  owes  its  origin  mainly  to  Christianity.   .    .    . 

And  here  we  may  note  a  significant  fact  in  which  the  inherent 
weakness  of  Hinduism  is  disclosed.  If  it  looks  to  the  revival 
of  the  national  faith  in  regard  to  religion,  it  yet  looks  to  the 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  255 

West  for  its  social  and  political  ideals.  In  this  strange  diver- 
gence it  confesses  its  utter  weakness  as  a  social  force;  that  there 
is  nothing  in  its  ancient  institutions  to  revive  which  will  fit  the 
nation  for  its  keen  struggle  for  existence ;  but  that  for  the 
elaboration  of  a  better  order  of  society  it  must  look  outside 
itself.  This  severance  of  religion  from  sociology,  this  failure  of 
Hinduism  as  a  reforming  agency,  a  regenerator  of  society,  an 
instrument  of  progress,  robs  it  of  half  its  strength,  and  en- 
courages the  Christian  advocate  to  hope  that,  as  the  thoughtful 
men  of  India  come  to  study  the  sociological  results  of  Christ's 
religion  in  the  West,  and  see  it  to  be  the  pioneer  of  all  true 
progress,  the  only  effective  agency  in  destroying  the  old  evils, 
they  may  be  led  to  pay  a  deeper  respect  to  its  underlying  and 
distinctive  truths.  Applied  Christianity  is  now  the  demand  of 
the  Western  world,  and  possibly  the  great  Indian  nation,  born 
to  new  life  in  the  present  age,  may  find  a  way  to  Christ  through 
the  social  and  political  avenues  of  our  time.   .    .    . 

The  fact  is  that,  though  a  new  spirit  is  abroad  working  under 
the  old  forms  of  Hinduism,  whose  ethics  are  gradually  being 
penetrated  and  transformed  by  the  ideals  of  the  West,  this 
movement  is  not  so  much  the  result  of  an  honest  conviction  of 
the  soundness  of  either  the  dogmas  or  the  institutions  of  Hindu- 
ism as  a  patriotic  attempt  to  harmonise  its  higher  ideals  with 
those  of  Christianity,  which  are  seen  to  be  everywhere  gaining 
ground  in  the  world.  It  bears  certain  resemblances  to  the  pre- 
tensions of  the  Gnostics  of  Alexandria  in  the  second  century 
who  held  the  key  to  the  higher  spiritual  philosophy,  which  at- 
tempted to  unify  Christ's  teaching  with  the  esoteric  wisdom  of 
Greece  and  Egypt.  The  leaven  of  Christianity  will  work,  and 
in  its  own  way,  and  in  its  natural  affinity  with  certain  pre-existing 
conditions  of  thought  will  form  semi-Christianised  philosophies 
like  the  neo-Platonism  of  Alexandria,  which  explained  away  the 
objectionable  features  of  the  old  mythology,  and  tried  to  fight 
Christianity  largely  with  its  own  weapons ;  and  those  eclectic 
systems  will,  for  a  time  at  least,  give  a  distinct  support  to  the 
old  religions  of  the  country,  and  even  infuse  new  life  into  them, 
presenting  many  features  of  the  Gospel  though  non-Christian  in 
their  basis.    .    .    . 

Mr.  Mazumdar  has  observed :  "  The  New  Testament  is  the 
source  of  a  hundred  developments  of  personal,  social,  and 
spiritual  reform  among  thoughtful  Hindus."  And,  in  still  more 
striking  words,  he  wrote :  "  Christ  is  a  tremendous  reality.  The 
destiny  of  India  hangs  upon  the  solution  of  His  nature  and  our 
relation  to  Him." 


256  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

And,  speaking  generally,  in  all  recent  religious  reforms,  the 
Vedic  idea  has  been  modified  by  Biblical  theism  and  Christian 
thought,  as  was  seen  in  the  history  of  Brahmoism  itself  as  far 
back  as  1854,  when  it  came  to  the  conclusion  that  it  was  im- 
possible to  frame  its  advanced  creed  upon  the  Vedas  and  Upani- 
shads.  And  in  other  directions,  not  excepting  the  revived  Ve- 
danta  of  the  present  day,  those  who  in  India  have  not  studied 
the  Bible  for  naught  are  reading  Christianity  into  Hinduism, 
and  finding  there,  under  its  light,  truths  that  were  never  found 
before,  instead  of  saying,  as  they  did  twenty  years  ago,  of  our 
religion,  "  It  is  not  true,"  they  are  now  saying,  "  It  is  not  new." 
Tending  more  and  more  to  the  belief  in  the  underlying  unity 
of  all  religions,  they  are  maintaining  that  the  faiths  of  the  East 
do  not  differ  materially  from  Christianity  in  their  essential  prin- 
ciples and  more  important  teachings,  and  so,  even  in  reform 
speeches,  and  on  the  National  Congress  platforms,  as  well  as 
in  Vedantic  pamphlets,  not  to  speak  of  Brahmist  services  and 
prayers,  there  are  frequent  allusions  to  the  Christian  Scriptures, 
together  with  a  more  or  less  Christian  colour  pervading  the 
thought.  To  the  assimilative  mind  of  India,  there  is  no  difficulty 
in  this  placing  Christian  thought  in  the  midst  of  Hinduism,  and 
regarding  it  as  a  part  thereof.  We  may  rest  assured  that  the 
truth  thus  absorbed  will  live,  and  will  ultimately  displace  the 
thoughts  and  ideas  that  have  ceased  to  thrill  with  life. —  (Slater, 
"The  Higher  Hinduism,"  pp.  14-22.) 

But  there  are  those  who  do  not  anticipate  such  an  outcome, 
but  who  regard  the  natural  result  of  all  the  present  stir  of  re- 
ligious thought  throughout  the  world  to  be  not  the  conquest  of 
the  world  by  Christianity,  but  the  permanence  of  the  world's 
present  religions  modified  to  admit  some  portion  of  Christian 
philosophy  and  ethics.  They  would  hold  this  also  to  be  the 
desirable  result,  on  the  ground  that  no  new  faith  or  religious 
principles  can  possibly  fill  the  function  of  the  old.  "  It  is  cer- 
tainly true,"  says  one,  "  that  human  nature  is  so  constituted 
that  when  a  man's  religious  ideals  are  once  disturbed,  those 
by  which  they  may  be  replaced  are  likely  to  be  so  insecurely 
rooted  as  to  have  little  determining  effect  upon  his  character 
or  future  career." — (Interview  in  the  New  York  Evening  Post, 
July  22,  1905.)  And  so  also  a  correspondent  in  the  Scotsman 
tells  us :  "  Thinking  men  have  long  been  agreed,  that  it  cannot  be 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  257 

claimed  for  any  organised  faith  that  it  is  essential  to  human 
salvation.  The  chief  end  of  the  ideal  missionary  cannot  be  to 
proselytise,  but  to  vivify  truth  wherever  he  finds  it,  and  inspire 
men  with  a  love  of  goodness,  leaving  it  to  them  to  decide  whether 
they  should  quit  the  ancestral  house  of  faith  in  which  they  have 
dwelt.  To  some  it  will  appear  necessary  to  quit  it;  to  others 
it  may  seem  needful  to  remain.  The  non-Christian  faiths  are 
neither  an  accident  nor  a  monstrosity.  They  contain  nutriment 
for  such  inner  life  as  their  votaries  are  capable  of,  though,  like 
the  dress  and  food  of  lower  races,  they  have  elements  which 
appear  incongruous  and  repugnant  to  us.  Their  difference  from 
our  own  faith  makes  it  easy  for  us  to  misjudge  them.  For 
a  man  to  accept  a  new  creed  and  a  strange  terminology,  and 
use  these  so  that  his  personal  quality  shall  be  improved,  is  a 
work  of  such  intellectual  difficulty  that  we  need  not  be  sur- 
prised if  many  shrink  from  it,  and  prefer  to  seek  goodness  by 
ruder  instruments  which  are  familiar  to  them.  From  this  and 
other  reasons,  proselytism  has  its  limits  in  any  mission  field." — 
(Quoted  in  Indian  Witness,  June  13,  1896.) 

7.  Yet  once  more  we  are  told  that  the  indisputable  result 
of  modern  thought  upon  Christianity  and  the  non-Christian  re- 
ligions is  to  make  it  impossible  any  longer  to  regard  Christianity 
as  the  absolute  religion,  and  unwise  to  speak  of  it  more  con- 
fidently than  as  "  better  "  than  the  non-Christian  religions,  and 
many  add  that  the  final  religion  is  only  to  be  reached  when  all 
the  religions  of  the  world  have  been  fused  into  one,  each  making 
its  own  distinctive  contribution,  and  humanity  working  out  the 
ultimate  result  only  by  the  patient  evolution  of  life.  The  florid 
Oriental  form  of  this  view  was  poured  forth  by  Swami  Viva- 
kananda  at  the  Parliament  of  Religions  in  Chicago  in  1903: 
"  If  there  is  ever  to  be  a  universal  religion,  it  must  be  that 
one  which  will  have  no  location  in  place  or  time ;  which  will 
be  infinite  like  the  God  it  will  reach ;  whose  sun  will  shine 
upon  the  followers  of  Krishna  and  Christ,  saints  or  sinners 
alike;  which  will  not  be  the  Brahmans'  or  the  Buddhists',  the 
Christians'  or  the  Mohammedans'  religion,  but  the  sum-total  of 
all  these,  and  still  have  infinite  space  for  development;  which 


258  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

in  its  catholicity  will  embrace  in  its  infinite  aims  and  find  a 
place  for  every  human  being,  from  the  lowest  grovelling  man 
not  far  removed  from  the  brute,  to  the  highest  man  towering 
by  the  virtues  of  his  heart  and  mind  almost  above  humanity 
and  making  society  stand  in  awe  of  him  and  doubt  his  human 
nature."  The  Swami  made  room  for  caste  in  his  dream.  The 
calm  Western  view  is  stated  in  Mr.  Scott's  little  book  on  "  The 
Apologetic  of  the  New  Testament " :  "  It  has  become  nec- 
essary to  defend,  not  only  the  Gospel  itself,  but  those  very 
foundations  of  all  religion  which  the  writers  of  our  New  Testa- 
ment could  assume  as  unquestionable.  Hardly  less  serious  are 
the  difficulties  which  have  been  brought  into  prominence  by  the 
study  of  comparative  religion.  Christianity,  it  would  appear, 
must  abandon  its  claim  to  a  unique  inspiration.  Its  genesis  in 
history  can  be  in  large  measure  traced;  the  elements  that  have 
gone  to  the  moulding  of  it  can  be  ascertained  and  separated; 
it  stands  no  longer  as  a  solitary  peak,  but  only  as  one  summit 
in  a  vast  formation."  This  view  is  the  inspiring  principle  of 
the  interesting  but  unimportant  propaganda  of  Behaism  in  the 
West,  and  it  is  the  commonly  accepted  principle  of  the  new 
"  Science  of  Religion."  At  the  special  conference  in  Miihlocker 
some  eight  or  nine  years  ago,  attended  by  many  of  the  most 
prominent  university  professors  and  theologians  from  all  over 
Germany,  and  called  to  discuss  the  comparative  study  of 
Christianity  as  one  of  the  world's  religions,  the  leading  paper 
by  Professor  Troeltsch  of  the  University  of  Heidelberg  set 
forth,  among  a  number  of  propositions,  these:  that  there  are 
gradations  between  the  great  religious  forces ;  that  in  the  va- 
rious personalities  and  phenomena  of  history  there  is  a  gradual 
unfolding  of  the  revelation  of  the  transcendental  forces  be- 
hind all  history,  which  in  these  personalities  and  phenomena 
brings  us  nearer  to  the  transcendental  absolute;  that  Chris- 
tianity, judged  from  this  point  of  view,  shows  itself  the  highest 
stage  of  religious  development,  and  in  principle  superior  to 
all  other  forms  of  religion,  but  nevertheless  as  a  phenomenon 
subject  to  the  historical  laws  of  growth;  that  all  other  beliefs 
as  to  Christianity,  such  as  the  conviction  that  Christianity  will 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  259 

be  invincible,  are  purely  a  matter  of  personal  faith  and  not  the 
subject  of  scientific  certainty.  At  the  same  conference  Dr.  Max 
Christlieb  discussed  mission  work  as  affected  by  this  denial  of 
the  absoluteness  of  Christianity,  and  these  were  his  leading 
propositions : 

1.  Our  knowledge  of  non-Christian  religions  has  become 
much  greater  in  recent  decades  than  it  was  before.  One  of  the 
results  of  this  growth  in  knowledge  is  the  general  conviction 
that  the  absoluteness  of  Christianity  can  no  longer  be  claimed. 
This  new  knowledge  must  influence  mission  problems  and  meth- 
ods of  work. 

2.  The  relative  merits  or  demerits  of  a  religion  are  to  be 
judged  by  its  fruits.  This  principle  must  obtain,  also,  in  the 
judgment  of  Christianity. 

3.  The  proposition  that  "  everything  in  heathendom  is  false  " 
can  no  longer  be  maintained,  in  view  of  the  fact  that  these  systems 
contain  so  much  that  agrees  with  Christianity. 

4.  On  the  other  hand,  the  recognition  of  the  good  elements 
in  the  heathen  religions  may  result  in  a  dangerous  practical 
syncretism. 

5.  The  proposition  that  "  everything  in  Christianity  is  true  " 
can  no  longer  be  maintained.  The  fact  that  certain  leading  doc- 
trines of  older  Christian  creeds,  such  as  the  eternal  condemnation 
of  the  unbaptised,  the  historical  character  of  the  story  of  crea- 
tion, the  personality  and  activity  of  the  devil,  have  been  generally 
discarded  by  Christian  thinkers  themselves,  has  already  led  to 
a  different  attitude  in  principle  toward  the  heathen  races. 

6.  The  fact  that  the  doctrine  of  verbal  inspiration  has  been 
generally  discarded  has  led  to  the  following  changes  in  the 
mission  field:  (a)  The  missionary  has  lost  the  support  of  abso- 
lute authority ;  (b)  Liberal  theology  must  be  taught  in  mission 
institutions;  (c)  All  problems  of  modern  religious  life  receive  a 
different  importance. 

7.  Since  the  absoluteness  of  Christianity  cannot  be  demon- 
strated, but  only  the  fact  that  it  is  relatively  the  highest  of 
religions,  we  need,  and  those  engaged  in  mission  work  also  need, 
a  greater  faith  than  ever  before. — (Translated  in  The  Literary 
Digest  of  December  28,  1901.) 

Now  the  question  of  the  absoluteness  of  Christianity  may, 
after  all,  be  not  much  more  than  a  controversy  over  words. 
At  any  rate,  we  can  leave  it  for  those  who  have  leisure  for  it. 


26o  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

The  practical  problem  of  the  missionary  enterprise  is  this,  Does 
the  actual  comparison  of  Christianity  with  the  non-Christian 
religions,  necessitated  by  the  work  of  missions,  show  that  that 
work  is  unnecessary  or  dissolve  the  missionary  duty  or  nullify 
its  aim?  What  does  the  missionary  movement  believe  that  it 
finds  as  a  result  of  that  study  of  comparative  religion  which  is 
its  daily  business? 

i.  We  find,  first  of  all,  that  men  everywhere  are  made  for 
religion,  that  there  is  in  humanity  a  deep  hunger  after  some- 
thing from  without  humanity,  that  in  spite  of  all  that  has  ob- 
structed His  way  and  distorted  His  word,  God  has  been  seeking 
men.  What  Jesus  told  the  woman  of  Samaria  we  find  evidenced 
in  every  nation,  that  God  is  a  Spirit,  and  that  those  who  wor- 
ship Him  must  worship  Him  in  spirit  and  truth,  and  that  the 
Father  is  seeking  such  to  worship  Him. 

2.  We  find  when  we  come  with  Christianity  to  the  other 
religions  of  the  world,  and  place  Christianity  in  comparison 
with  them,  that  Christianity  has  all  the  good  of  other  religions. 
There  is  good  and  truth  in  these  religions  which  we  joyfully 
acknowledge,  which  has  enabled  them  to  survive  and  given  them 
their  power,  but  there  is  no  truth  or  good  in  them  which  is  not 
found  in  a  purer  and  fuller  form  in  Christianity.  Hinduism 
teaches  the  immanence  of  God;  Mohammedanism  the  sov- 
ereignty of  God ;  Buddhism  the  transitoriness  and  yet  the  solemn 
issues  of  our  present  life ;  Confucianism  the  dignity  of  our 
earthly  relationships  and  of  human  society.  But  are  not  all 
these  truths  in  Christianity  also?  It  is  so  with  whatever  of 
good  we  find  anywhere.  To  complete  a  sonnet,  from  which  I 
have  already  quoted : 

We  with  reverent  minds  searching  the  lore 
Of  ancient  days,  find  buried  here  and  there 
Fragments  of  precious  truths  and,  piecing  them 
Again  with  reverent  minds,  construct  a  Form 
And  Body  of  the  Truth — when  lo!  the  whole 
Grows  to  the  likeness  of  our  own  dear  Christ. 

There  is  no  truth  anywhere  which  is  not  already  in  Christ, 
and  in  Christ  in  its  fullest  and  richest  form.     Even  the  trans- 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  261 

formed  Hinduism  of  the  Vedanta  offers  only  portions  of  what 
we  already  have  in  Him.  As  Mr.  Slater  says:  "The  Christian 
Gospel  offers  all  that  the  Vedanta  offers,  and  infinitely  more. 
So  true  is  it  that  every  previous  revelation  flows  into  the  revela- 
tion we  have  in  Christ,  and  loses  itself  in  Him.  Christ  includes 
all  teachers.  All  '  other  masters '  are  in  Christ.  We  do  not 
deny  the  truths  they  taught;  we  can  delight  in  all.  We  can 
give  heed  to  all  the  prophets;  but  every  truth  in  every  prophet 
melts  into  the  truth  we  have  in  Christ.  And  Christ 
tells  us  that  life,  not  death,  is  what  our  souls  are  made 
for.  That  is  His  distinctive  message  to  the  non-Christian  world. 
To  be  made  one  with  the  divine,  '  not  in  the  dull  abyss  of 
characterless  nonentity,  lapsing  from  the  personal  down  to 
the  impersonal,  from  the  animate  to  the  inanimate,  from 
the  self  back  to  the  mere  thing ' ;  but  in  the  reciprocal  em- 
brace of  conscious  love,  mutually  realised  and  enjoyed — that 
is  the  true  and  highest  bhakti-yoga — knowing  even  as  we  are 
known." 

And  not  only  are  all  the  truths  of  the  other  religions  in 
Christianity,  but  they  are  there  balanced  and  corrected  as  they 
are  not  in  the  non-Christian  religions.  Hinduism  teaches  that 
God  is  near,  but  it  forgets  that  He  is  holy.  Mohammedanism 
teaches  that  God  is  great,  but  forgets  that  He  is  loving.  It 
knows  that  He  is  a  king,  but  not  that  He  is  a  father.  Bud- 
dhism teaches  that  this  earthly  life  is  fleeting,  but  it  forgets 
that  God  sent  us  to  do  work,  and  that  we  must  do  it  while  it 
is  day.  Confucianism  teaches  that  we  live  in  the  midst  of  a 
great  framework  of  sacred  relationships,  but  it  forgets  that  in 
the  midst  of  these  we  have  a  living  help  and  a  personal  fellow- 
ship with  the  eternal  God,  in  whose  lasting  presence  is  our  home. 
What  the  other  religions  forget,  or  never  knew,  Christianity 
tells  us  in  the  fulness  of  its  truth. 

3.  We  find  that  with  whatever  good  they  may  have,  the 
non-Christian  religions  are  seamed  with  evils  from  which  Chris- 
tianity is  free.  How  they  came  there  a  great  parable  of  our 
Lord  describes.  Whatever  truth  men  know  we  know  is  His; 
whatever  evil  mars  that  truth,  another's. 


262  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

The  Sower  sowed,  and  sowing  went  His  way: 
His  seeds,  sound  grains  of  truth,  and  on  a  soil 
Rich  with  the  mellowed  wisdom  of  the  age, 
Promising  noble  yield  of  increment, 
But  night  came  on — the  waning  aeon's  night — 
And  while  men  slept  an  envious  neighbour  came, 
Trod  in  the  Sower's  steps,  and  broadcast  threw 
Over  the  new-sown  fields  his  evil  tares, 
And  so  withdrew. 

If  only  one  might  hope  that  he  had  withdrawn!  But  the 
harm  that  he  wrought  and  some  power  which  sustains  it  abide. 
These  are  facts  which  in  the  interest  of  truth  we  are  bound  to 
face.  For  the  truth's  sake,  and  with  joy,  we  recognise  what- 
ever of  "  true  teaching  or  high  aspiration "  we  can  find,  but 
without  disloyalty  to  the  truth  we  cannot  deny  the  tares,  we 
cannot  maintain  that  these  religions  "  have  no  materially  worse 
side,  that  they  embody  the  best  thoughts  and  the  highest  long- 
ings of  the  men  from  whom  they  proceeded,  that  their  defects 
are  only  of  deficiency  in  comparison  with  the  fuller  teaching 
of  the  Christian  creed,  and  that  they  must  no  more  be  held 
responsible  for  the  vices  which  obtain  amongst  their  followers 
than  the  Gospel  for  the  vices  of  Christendom.  To  me,"  says 
Bishop  Lefroy,  from  whom  I  quote  these  words,  "  St.  Paul  is 
conclusive  on  this  point,  for,  while  never  abusing  other  faiths 
in  the  presence  of  their  followers,  rather  at  such  times  laying 
hold  on  them  to  suggest  and  justify  his  own  teaching — he  yet 
in  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans  unmistakably  shows  what  his  view 
was  of  the  working  of  Grecian  and  Roman  mythology  as  a 
whole,  tracing  all  the  fearful  social  and  political  corruption  of 
the  age  up  to  idolatry  and  false  religious  beliefs  as  the  foun- 
tain head." — (Cambridge  Mission,  Occasional  Paper,  "  Moham- 
medanism," No.  21,  p.  13  ff.)  If  we  take  a  different  attitude, 
if  we  gloss  over  the  dark  facts  in  the  non-Christian  religions, 
we  do  three  things, — we  falsify  the  facts,  we  prepare  for  a 
great  reaction  of  denunciation  and  dislike  of  the  non-Christian 
religions  when  the  truth  finds  access  to  minds  accustomed  to  a 
distorted  view,  and  we  disqualify  ourselves  for  dealing  helpfully 
with  the  non-Christian  religions.     "  For  one  and  all  of  these, 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  263 

while  their  strength  is  in  that  fragment  of  truth,  which,  how- 
ever maimed  and  distorted,  with  whatever  contradiction  and 
under  whatever  disguises,  they  hold,  have  also  their  eminently- 
weak  side,  that  on  which  they  signally  deny  and  ignore  some 
great  truths  which  the  spirit  of  man  craves,  which  the  Scripture 
of  God  affirms,  a  side,  therefore,  on  which  "  we  need  to  know 
how  to  give  the  hearts  that  rest  in  them  the  very  help  which 
they  need  and  have  not  found.  (Trench,  Hulsean  Lectures  for 
1845.     Lecture  8,  p.  117.     Quoted  by  Lefroy,  op.  cit.,  p.  14.) 

With  no  joy,  with  a  heavy  heart,  the  missionary  enterprise 
sets  down  what  it  has  found  of  radical  evil  and  error  in  the 
non-Christian  religions. 

In  Confucianism  it  has  found  polytheism,  idolatry,  and  polyg- 
amy. The  Chinese  people  are  a  people  of  many  noble  qualities, 
but  we  are  considering  now  not  the  people  but  the  Confucian 
system.  As  Dr.  Faber  has  described  it,  it  recognises  no  rela- 
tion to  a  living  God.  Though  dimly  known,  He  is  not  the  only 
object  of  worship.  Polytheism  is  taught  in  the  Classics.  Idolatry 
is  the  natural  consequence,  and  all  the  superstitions  in  con- 
nection with  it  among  the  people  are  the  inevitable  results. 
Geomancy,  spiritualism,  exorcism,  and  all  kinds  of  deceit  prac- 
tised by  Buddhist  and  Taoist  priests  have  their  origin  in  the 
worship  of  ancestral  spirits,  for  which  Confucianism  is  respon- 
sible, since  sacrificing  to  the  dead  is  taught  as  the  highest  filial 
duty  in  the  Classics,  and  Mencius  sanctions  polygamy  on  its 
account.  Though  the  practice  of  building  temples  to  heroes 
arose  shortly  after  the  Classical  Period,  its  roots  can  be  found 
in  the  Classics,  and  there  are  now  over  100,000  such  temples 
in  China  to  great  warriors  and  other  men  of  eminence,  in  which 
sacrifices  are  offered  and  incense  is  burned  to  their  shades. 
Omens  and  the  choice  of  lucky  days  are  a  sacred  duty  enjoined 
by  the  Classics  and  enforced  by  law.  Confucianism  not  only 
has  no  censure  for  polygamy,  but  sanctions  it  in  the  Classics. 
The  misery  of  eunuchs,  secondary  wives,  slave  girls,  degrada- 
tion of  women  in  general,  are  accompaniments  of  this  vice. 
"  The  Confucian  system  did  not  do  much  for  women.  The 
Analects  tell  us  that  '  Women  are  difficult  to  manage ;  if  you 


264  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

are  familiar  with  them,  they  are  not  humble;  if  you  keep  them 
at  a  distance,  they  become  discontented.'  And,  as  Dr.  Faber  tells 
us,  nothing  is  said  about  the  relations  of  married  people.  There 
is  abundance  of  instruction  as  to  brothers,  but  sisters  are  not 
even  mentioned.  The  stress  laid  on  filial  piety,  the  worship  of 
ancestors,  makes  it  the  chief  duty  of  sons  to  procure  a  posterity 
in  order  that  sacrifices  may  be  continued.  Hence  polygamy  at 
times  becomes  an  ethical  necessity,  a  religious  duty,  and  there 
is  no  testimony  against  this  social  evil  in  the  whole  range  of 
Chinese  literature." — (China  Centenary  Conference  Report,  Ad- 
dress by  D.  L.  Anderson,  p.  47.) 

In  Confucianism  the  system  of  social  life  is  tyranny.  Women 
are  slaves.  Children  have  no  rights  in  relation  to  their  parents, 
whilst  subjects  are  placed  in  the  position  of  children  with  re- 
gard to  their  superiors.  It  is  a  strict  demand  of  Confucius  in 
the  Classics  that  a  son  should  lose  no  time  in  revenging  the 
death  of  his  father  or  of  a  near  relation.  Blood  revenge  was 
an  ancient  usage,  but  Confucius  both  sanctioned  it  and  raised 
it  to  a  moral  duty,  poisoning  by  it  three  of  his  five  social  rela- 
tions. (Summarised  from  Faber,  "China  in  the  Light  of  His- 
tory," pp.  59-64 ;  "  A  Systematical  Digest  of  the  Doctrines  of 
Confucius,"  pp.  124-127.)  The  Chinese  people  are  both  better 
and  worse  than  Confucianism,  but  it  is  a  painful  and  significant 
fact,  as  Kanzo  Uchimura  says  in  his  dialogues,  that  "  in  all 
the  countries  where  the  Confucian  morality  is  in  vogue,  sexual 
crime  is  not  usually  considered  as  a  crime.  That  is  so;  and 
that  is  the  chief  reason,  I  think,  why  there  is  no  such  thing 
as  happy  home  in  these  countries." — (An  Anglo- Japanese  Con- 
versation, p.  48.) 

It  is  neither  necessary  nor  desirable  to  state  all  that  is 
found  of  evil  in  Hinduism,  in  comparison  with  Christianity. 
The  Hindus  themselves  have  made  the  presentation  far  more 
fully  and  convincingly  than  any  missionaries  have  ever  sought 
to  make  it.  The  writings  of  Ram  Mohun  Roy  and  of  Keshub 
Chunder  Sen  are  all  that  need  to  be  read.  It  must  suffice  here 
to  point  out  only  two  things,  first,  the  evil  philosophy  of  life 
which  Hinduism  presents  in  its  pantheism,  and  secondly,  the 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  265 

moral  fruitage  of  it.  Christianity,  even  at  the  sacrifice  of 
intellectual  unity  for  the  sake  of  moral  completeness,  maintains 
both  the  transcendence  and  the  immanence  of  God,  while  "  Hin- 
duism by  denying  His  transcendence  and  maintaining  His  im- 
manence totally  abandons  moral  in  favour  of  intellectual  com- 
pleteness."—  ("  Mankind  and  the  Church,"  Mylne  on  "  Hindu- 
ism.") In  a  world  where  God  is  responsible  for  all,  and  is 
in  all,  even  in  lust  and  sin,  and  where  all  reality  is  illusive, 
men  will  not  be  clean,  and  they  will  not  be  hopeful.  One  of 
the  most  capable  of  the  younger  leaders  of  India  has  described 
the  effect  of  this  theory  of  life  for  us : 

To  the  Hindu  the  external  world  is  unreal  and  he  is  ever  op- 
pressed by  the  consciousness  that  behind  the  things  of  sense  is 
the  unseen  world,  continually  exerting  its  influence  upon  the  life 
of  mankind  in  ways  that  are  inexplicable.  The  fear  of  the 
unseen  and  the  delusiveness  of  the  seen  continually  haunt  him. 
His  luxuriant  imagination  detects  symbolism  everywhere  and  in 
all  things,  pure  and  foul,  good  and  evil,  in  love,  passion,  and 
hate.  In  this  ever-shifting  world  of  impermanence  the  soul  wan- 
ders, finding  temporary  abode  in  human  form  or  in  that  of  a 
lower  animal,  or  even  it  may  be  in  a  rock,  stone,  or  tree.  Side 
by  side  with  this  conviction  of  the  unreality  of  the  world  of 
sense,  there  is  deeply  ingrained  in  the  Hindu  mind  the  idea  of 
retribution.  The  deeds  of  a  past  existence  hound  a  man  through 
this  present  life.  Good  and  evil  actions,  whether  done  inten- 
tionally or  inadvertently,  have  a  retributory  force,  and  a  man 
is  continually  reaping  a  harvest  sown  in  the  unknown  and  un- 
remembered  past.  Nothing  avails  to  ease  his  lot,  and  thus  he 
struggles  in  the  morass  of  existence.  Every  endeavour  to  extri- 
cate himself  sinks  him  even  more  deeply  and  hopelessly.  It  is 
these  beliefs  that  are  ultimately  responsible  for  the  deadening 
influences  of  Hinduism. 

The  Hindu  theory  of  life  and  of  the  universe  blunts  the 
finer  feelings,  and  its  hopelessness  is  subversive  to  morality  and 
truth,  and  antagonistic  to  progress  and  reform.  The  moral  prac- 
tice of  the  people  is  not  on  the  whole  very  different  from  that 
of  Western  peoples.  The  moral  standard,  however,  is  lower. 
Hinduism  has  no  bar  of  public  opinion  at  which  tyrannous  social 
custom  and  immorality  may  be  arraigned.  We  cannot  forget 
that  many  Indian  religious  leaders  have  inculcated  high  and 
noble  sentiments,  but  Hinduism  shows  its  impotence  to  correct 


266  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

or  even  to  condemn  moral  and  social  wrong.  The  greatest  evil 
is  not  caste,  nor  untruthfulness,  nor  cruelty  to  the  individual, 
nor  immorality.  All  these  are  symptomatic  of  a  diseased  mind. 
The  reform  needed  is  more  radical  than  to  break  down  the 
tyranny  of  caste,  prevent  child-marriage,  rescind  the  restrictions 
against  widow  remarriage,  purify  the  temples  and  ennoble  the 
worship  of  the  people.  It  is  nothing  less  than  to  give  India  a 
new  outlook  upon  the  world  and  human  life. — (Datta,  "  The 
Desire  of  India,"  Chapter  III.) 

This  is  Dr.  Datta's  analysis,  but  something  further  is  to  be 
said  of  the  actual  working  out  in  life  of  the  moral  effects  of 
Hindu  pantheism.  You  can  put  it  in  grand  words,  if  you  like, 
such  as  those  which  Macaulay  uses  in  the  introduction  to  his 
famous  speech  on  "  The  Gates  of  Somnauth  " :  "  As  this  super- 
stition is  of  all  superstitions  the  most  irrational,  and  of  all  super- 
stitions the  most  inelegant,  so  it  is  of  all  superstitions  the  most 
immoral.  Emblems  of  vice  are  objects  of  public  worship.  Acts 
of  vice  are  acts  of  public  worship.  The  courtesans  are  as  much 
a  part  of  the  establishment  of  the  temple,  as  much  the  ministers 
of  the  gods,  as  the  priests.  Crimes  against  life,  crimes  against 
property,  are  not  only  permitted  but  enjoined  by  this  odious 
theology."  And  if  you  do  not  want  it  put  in  Macaulay's  grand 
way,  you  will  find  it  cogently  expressed  in  Mr.  Meredith  Town- 
send's  essay  on  "  The  Core  of  Hinduism,"  where  he  is  dealing 
especially  with  Vivekananda's  representations  at  the  Parliament 
of  Religions.  There,  and  in  other  essays,  Mr.  Townsend,  for 
years  a  resident  of  India,  and  a  careful  student  of  its  life,  com- 
plains that  the  great  curse  of  India  is  just  what  he  says  is  the 
worst  idea  of  all  Asia,  namely,  that  morality  has  no  immutable 
basis,  but  is  deemed  by  every  man  a  fluctuating  law,  and  that 
it  is  a  characteristic  of  the  Hindu  mind  that  it  is  able  to  hold, 
and  actually  does  hold,  the  most  diametrically  opposite  ideas, 
as  though  all  such  ideas  were  true ;  and  that  the  great  weakness 
in  Hinduism,  making  it  utterly  insufficient  for  the  needs  of  men, 
is  the  absolute  want  of  that  ethical  reality  which  is  one  of  the 
essential  characteristics  of  Christianity,  the  want  of  any  vinculum 
binding  religious  faith  to  moral  life.  This  explains  why  the 
holiest  city  of  India  is  so  vile.    This  explains  why  it  was  neces- 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  267 

sary  for  the  British  Government  by  statute  to  prohibit  the  ob- 
scenities of  public  religious  worship  in  India. 

In  Buddhism  in  our  comparison  we  come  upon  no  such 
abyss.  The  evil  of  Buddhism  is  not  so  easily  located,  but  it 
is  the  more  pervasive.  To  affirm  it  will  be  to  invite  denial,  be- 
cause of  the  developments  in  Buddhism  which  have  raised  up 
schools  which  contradict  its  fundamental  principles.  "  It  passes," 
as  Sir  Monier  Williams  says,  "  from  apparent  atheism  and 
materialism  to  theism,  polytheism,  and  spiritualism.  It  is  under 
one  aspect  mere  pessimism;  under  another,  pure  philanthropy; 
under  another,  monastic  communism ;  under  another,  high  moral- 
ity; under  another,  a  variety  of  materialistic  philosophy;  under 
another,  simply  demonology ;  under  another,  a  mere  farrago  of 
superstitions,  including  necromancy,  witchcraft,  idolatry,  and 
fetichism." — (Monier  Williams,  "Buddhism,"  p.  13.)  In  the 
forms  in  which  it  presses  itself  upon  comparison  with  Chris- 
tianity in  Northern  Asia  it  is  itself  a  reflection  of  Christian 
thought,  and  is  dependent  for  a  knowledge  of  its  own  history 
largely  upon  Christian  scholars.  "  There  are  not  a  score  of  men 
in  Japan  who  can  tell  you  what  Buddhism  teaches.  In  talking 
with  Dr.  Lloyd  of  the  Imperial  University  the  other  day,"  writes 
a  young  missionary  in  Japan,  "  I  said  to  him  that  I  wanted  tc 
get  hold  of  some  educated  Japanese  Buddhist  priest,  who  has 
not  been  too  much  influenced  by  Western  thought,  for  in  this 
way  I  hoped  to  learn  what  real  Buddhists  believed.  He  smiled 
and  then  said  he  had  thought  that  he  had  found  such  a  man. 
He  was  intelligent  and  apparently  well-versed  in  the  real  teach- 
ings of  pure  Buddhism,  and  as  he  knew  no  foreign  language 
he  seemed  quite  promising  as  a  source  of  first-hand  information. 
Dr.  Lloyd  asked  him  many  questions  of  things  ancient  and 
modern,  and  the  priest's  answers  seemed  quite  intelligent  and 
much  in  harmony  with  what  Dr.  Lloyd  already  knew.  After  the 
various  interviews  were  over  the  priest  mentioned  as  the  au- 
thority for  his  information  the  writings  of  Rhys-Davids."  But 
back  of  all  the  modification  under  the  influence  of  Christian 
thought  pure  Buddhism  in  the  south  of  Asia  is  both  outspokenly 
atheistic  and,   from  our  point  of  view,  non-religious.     "  Bud- 


268  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

dhism,"  says  an  editorial  in  The  Buddhist,  the  organ  of  the 
Young  Men's  Buddhist  Association  in  Colombo,  whose  first  ob- 
ject is  the  study  and  propagation  of  Buddhism,  "  demands  no 
belief  in  a  God,  involves  no  dogma,  and  enjoins  no  ritual.  It 
is  self-culture  based  on  self-knowledge.  In  other  words,  it  is 
the  rational  regulation  of  our  own  conduct.  Buddhism  is  that, 
and  nothing  more,  nothing  less.  ...  It  satisfies  the  needs  of 
men  from  whose  eyes  the  scales  of  superstition  have  fallen,  and 
who  need  no  supernatural  help  to  understand  and  appreciate 
what  is  good  and  true."  "  It  is  an  etymological  injustice  to  refer 
to  Buddhism  as  a  religion,"  declares  one  of  the  leading  articles. 
"  To  be  a  Buddhist  is  to  be  irreligious,  to  be  unbound.  .  .  . 
To  call  Buddhism  a  religion  is  a  contradiction  in  terms.  Bud- 
dhism not  only  does  not  admit  the  existence  of  a  God,  it  also 
denies  the  existence  of  a  soul." — (The  Buddhist,  July,  1907,  pp. 
209,  219.)  Indisputably  Buddhism  is  not  a  religion  in  the  same 
sense  as  Christianity,  for  it  holds  as  false  what  Christianity 
regards  as  its  deepest  and  most  precious  goods.  Pure  Buddhism 
denies  the  personality  and  the  very  existence  of  God.  As  Dr. 
Kellogg  has  said,  it  deliberately  "  stamps  human  nature  as  evil, 
not  because  it  is  sinful,  but  simply  because  it  exists,  for  all 
existence  is  evil  " ;  it  is  a  religion  that  pronounces  our  holiest  re- 
lationships, husband  and  wife,  father  and  child,  evil  relationships, 
and  that  tells  every  man  who  would  attain  Nirvana  at  the  last 
that  he  must  cut  loose  from  such  things;  a  religion  that  de- 
liberately denies  the  most  necessary  convictions  of  our  minds, 
that  pronounces  our  consciousness  of  personality,  our  belief  in 
our  possession  of  a  soul,  simple  delusions ;  a  religion  that  con- 
demns our  holiest  ambitions  to  eternal  punishment. 

And  in  Islam,  at  once  so  near  to  Christianity  and  so  far 
away,  we  find  when  we  make  our  comparison  over  against 
Christianity's  contrary  principles,  the  great  evils  of  fatalism, 
despotism,  polygamy,  and  slavery.  "  In  vain,"  says  Professor 
Smyth  in  his  Oxford  Lectures  on  Modern  History,  "  did  he 
(Mohammed)  destroy  the  idols  of  his  countrymen  and  sublime 
their  faith  to  the  worship  of  the  one  true  God.  In  vain  did 
he  inculcate  compassion  to  the  distressed,  alms  to  the  needy, 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  269 

protection  and  tenderness  to  the  widow  and  the  orphan.  He 
neither  abolished  nor  discountenanced  polygamy,  and  the  pro- 
fessors of  his  faith  have  thus  been  left  the  domestic  tyrants  of 
one-half  of  their  own  race.  He  taught  predestination,  and  they 
have  thus  become  by  their  crude  application  of  his  doctrines  the 
victims  of  every  natural  disease  and  calamity.  He  practised 
intolerance,  and  they  are  thus  made  the  victims  of  the  civilised 
world.  He  permitted  the  union  of  the  regal  and  sacerdotal 
offices,  and  he  made  the  book  of  his  religion  and  legislation  the 
same.  All  alteration,  therefore,  among  the  Mohammedans  must 
have  been  thought  impiety.  Last  in  the  scale  of  thinking  beings, 
they  have  exhibited  families  without  society,  subjects  without 
freedom,  governments  without  security,  and  nations  without  im- 
provement." This  is  rhetoric,  but  it  is  truth.  In  the  most 
charitable  and  effective  apology  for  Islam  which  we  have  in 
English,  Mr.  Bosworth  Smith  admits  the  evil  standards  of  Islam 
as  to  woman  and  concedes  that  there  are  in  Christianity  whole 
realms  of  thought,  and  whole  fields  of  morals,  that  are  all  but 
outside  the  religion  of  Mohammed ;  that  Christianity  teaches  men 
ideals  of  personal  purity,  of  humility,  of  forgiveness  of  injuries, 
of  the  subjection  of  the  lower  life  to  the  demands  of  the  higher 
life,  ideals  which  are  absolutely  foreign  to  Mohammedanism; 
that  it  sets  before  men  possibilities  of  progress  and  boundless 
development  of  the  mind  such  as  Mohammed  never  dreamed  of ; 
that  in  the  various  paths  of  human  attainment  the  characters 
that  Christianity  has  developed  have  been  greater,  more  many- 
sided,  more  holy,  than  any  of  the  characters  that  Islam  has  pro- 
duced. Mr.  Bosworth  Smith  himself  has  to  admit  as  much  as 
this,  that  the  great  religion  for  which  he  is  saying  the  best  that 
can  be  said  is  a  religion  that  for  1,200  years  has  been  sterile 
intellectually.  And,  what  is  worse  than  that,  Mohammedanism 
is  held  by  many  who  have  to  live  under  its  shadow  to  be  the  most 
degraded  religion,  morally,  in  the  world.  We  speak  of  it  as 
superior  to  the  other  religions  because  of  its  monotheistic  faith, 
but  missionaries  from  India  tell  us  that  the  actual  moral 
conditions  to  be  found  among  Mohammedans  there  are  as  terrible 
as  those  to  be  found  among  the  pantheistic  Hindus  themselves, 


270  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

and  the  late  Dr.  Cochran  of  Persia,  a  man  who  had  unsurpassed 
opportunities  for  seeing  the  inner  life  of  Mohammedan  men, 
told  me,  toward  the  close  of  his  life,  that  he  could  not  say,  out 
of  his  long  and  intimate  acquaintance  as  a  doctor  with  the  men 
of  Persia,  that  he  had  ever  met  one  pure-hearted  or  pure-lived 
adult  man  among  the  Mohammedans  of  Persia. 

It  is  not  pleasant  to  speak  of  these  things.  We  are  not 
speaking  of  them  because  a  Christian  man  finds  any  joy  in 
denouncing  these  evils  in  the  non-Christian  religions.  We  would 
denounce  these  evils  if  we  found  them  in  our  own  land;  we 
speak  no  more  harshly  about  them  in  other  lands  than  we  speak 
about  them  in  our  own.  But  we  will  not  let  the  fact  that  these 
great  evils  are  cloaked  by  religious  sanctions  abroad  compel  us 
to  speak  of  them  with  less  condemnation ;  we  will  speak  of  them 
with  more  condemnation  because  they  are  imbedded  in  the  midst 
of  those  very  forces  out  of  which  men's  whole  hope  of  holiness 
must  flow.  It  cannot  be  allowed,  as  we  would  gladly  allow, 
that  these  evils  in  the  non-Christian  religions  are  mere  ex- 
crescences not  due  to  the  religions,  or  not  vitally  connected  with 
the  religions,  but  the  sad  contributions  of  man's  own  evil  nature 
polluting  his  religious  faiths.  For  these  evils  spring  out  of  the 
fundamental  principles  of  the  non-Christian  religions  and  are  so 
interwoven  with  them  that  they  can  only  die  with  the  death  of 
the  religion  or  with  such  radical  transformation  of  its  character 
as  will  make  it  cease  to  be  itself.  It  is  only  the  influence  of  Chris- 
tianity which  has  led  the  non-Christian  religions  to  discover  these 
things  of  shame,  and  many  of  them  are  not  yet  and  cannot  be 
disavowed.  In  the  case  of  Hinduism  the  worst  evils  are  evils 
which  have  been  enshrined  in  the  institutions  and  sanctified  and 
perpetuated  in  the  character  of  the  gods.  When  Lord  William 
Bentinck  made  widow-burning  a  crime  the  Hindus  memorialised 
the  Government,  affirming  that  suttee  was  a  sacred  duty  and 
a  lofty  principle,  and  denouncing  the  new  legislation  as  "  a 
breach  of  the  promise  that  there  should  be  no  interference  with 
the  religious  customs  of  the  Hindus."  The  worst  literature  of 
India  is  part  of  the  sacred  books,  and  one  of  the  most  obscene 
festivals,  the  Holi  or  Shimga,  is  part  of  the  prescribed  religious 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  271 

observance  of  the  Hindus  throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of 
India.  "  Of  the  sacred  books,  the  Dharam  Sindhu,  for  example," 
says  Dnyanodaiya,  "  quotes  approvingly  from  the  Jotirnibandh, 
which  says,  '  of  the  fifteen  days  from  the  fifth  day  of  the  bright 
half  of  the  moon  to  the  fifth  of  the  dark  half,  ten  are  infinitely 
meritorious.  During  these  days  wood  and  cowdung  cakes  should 
be  stolen  and  kindled  either  in  or  outside  the  village,  with  fire 
stolen  from  the  house  of  a  low-caste  man.  The  king,  having 
bathed  and  purified  himself,  should  give  gifts  and  light  the  Holi 
fire.  In  the  same  way  the  people  should  spend  the  night  in 
pleasures,  singing  and  dancing.  Pronouncing  obscene  words, 
they  should  walk  thrice  around  the  fire.  By  these  obscene  words 
the  sinful  goddess,  Dhunda,  will  be  satisfied.'  Here  are  two 
religious  books,  at  least,  that  approve  of  this  filthy  way  of  cele- 
brating the  Shimga,  the  former  being  not  only  a  well-known 
book,  but  the  standard  reference  for  present  rites  and  ceremonies. 
The  Dharam  Sindhu  further  adds  that  no  sin  is  committed  by 
these  acts  and  words.  The  philosophy  with  which  this  is  ex- 
plained is  that  the  goddess,  Dhunda,  is  a  lover  of  sin,  and  there- 
fore the  appeasing  of  her  and  the  gaining  of  her  favour,  by 
that  which  is  sinful,  must  be  right." 

And  just  as  immorality  is  the  inevitable  and  not  the  acci- 
dental consequence  of  the  fundamental  principles  of  the  actual 
Hinduism  of  the  past  and  of  its  sacred  books,  so  the  other 
evils  which  we  have  considered  stand  essentially  and  inseparably 
connected  with  the  other  religions,  which  in  their  true  historic 
character  and  not  in  Christianised  form  must  enter  the  field  of 
comparison. 

4.  In  the  fourth  place,  we  find  not  only  that  the  non-Christian 
religions  are  marred  by  evils  from  which  Christianity  is  free, 
but  also  that  Christianity  has  indispensable  elements  of  good 
which  they  lack.  When  with  reverent  mind  we  piece  again  the 
fragments  of  good  and  truth  found  buried  in  the  lore  of  ancient 
days  and  construct  from  them  a  Form  and  Body  of  Truth,  the 
whole  does  not  yield  exactly  "  the  likeness  of  our  own  dear 
Christ."  There  is  no  good  or  truth  that  is  not  in  Him,  but  He 
is  more  than  men  ever  dreamed.     I  would  mention  four  of  the 


272  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

many  things  in  Christianity  which  are  original  with  it,  and  which 
it  alone  offers  to  men. 

(i)  One  is  the  conception  of  the  fatherhood  of  God.  No 
phrase  is  more  common  in  the  discussion  of  comparative  religion 
to-day,  and  it  is  often  assumed  that  this  is  a  common  idea  of 
all  religions.  On  the  contrary,  it  was  the  revelation  of  Jesus 
Christ.  The  conception  was  strange  to  the  Jews.  In  the  prophets 
there  are  three  or  four  references  to  God  as  the  father  of  his 
people,  but  the  idea  is  of  a  political  or  national  fatherhood,  not 
of  a  personal  father.  And  in  the  Book  of  Psalms,  embodying 
the  religious  aspirations  and  experiences  of  Israel,  there  are  only 
three  references  to  the  thought,  and  these  merely  poetical.  In 
any  one  of  the  Gospels  or  any  two  or  three  of  St.  Paul's  Epistles 
to  his  churches  there  is  more  of  the  Fatherhood  of  God  than 
in  the  whole  Old  Testament.  And  in  not  one  of  the  non- 
Christian  religions  does  the  rich  conception  really  appear,  except 
as  it  has  been  learned  from  Christianity. 

(2)  Its  discovery  of  the  central  need  of  man  in  the  forgive- 
ness of  his  sin  and  the  destruction  of  sin's  power,  and  its  pro- 
vision for  this  need.  Because  no  other  religion  has  the  same 
idea  of  God,  no  other  religion  can  discover  the  central  need 
of  man  as  Christianity  discovers  it,  and,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
no  other  religion  does.  And  none  other  knows  the  principle  of 
the  free  forgiveness  of  love  through  grace.  The  one  which  came 
in  time  after  Christianity,  and  which  should  know  more,  if  any 
can,  only  declares  in  the  verse  of  the  Koran  which  has  troubled 
many  Moslems :  "  Every  mortal  necessarily  must  once  go  to  hell ; 
it  is  obligatory  on  God  to  send  all  men  necessarily  once  to  hell ; 
and  afterwards  He  may  pardon  whom  He  will."  And  even 
when  other  religions  prescribe  what  the  sin-hardened,  soul  should 
do  to  expiate  his  sins  that  are  gone,  they  have  no  word  of 
power  or  hope  for  the  deliverance  of  men  from  the  continuing 
power  of  evil.  A  young  university  student  in  Japan,  now  occupy- 
ing an  important  position  in  the  city  of  Osaka,  who  had  been 
a  leader  among  his  fellows,  near  the  end  of  his  course  gave 
way  to  temptation.  "  After  some  time,  eager  to  regain  his  self- 
respect  and  his  lost  position,  he  sought  the  priest  of  a  famous 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  273 

Buddhist  temple.  To  him  he  told  his  troubles  and  his  longings. 
The  priest  said :  '  I  can  help  you.  If  you  kneel  with  your  thumbs 
together  before  the  Buddha  here,  and  remain  absolutely  motion- 
less for  three  hours,  you  will  be  given  strength  to  resist  tempta- 
tion.' The  seeker  obeyed.  In  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  mos- 
quitoes annoyed  him  constantly,  he  knelt  as  nearly  motionless 
as  possible  for  the  required  time.  Then  he  passed  out  of  the 
temple — to  fall  before  his  temptation,  as  before.  For  two  years 
he  groped  for  help,  but  in  vain,  until  he  heard  of  Christ." 

(3)  Thirdly,  it  is  Christianity  alone  which  has  introduced 
into  the  world  the  ideal  of  sacrificial  service,  the  ideal  which 
a  sympathetic  student  of  the  modern  Vedanta  in  India  describes, 
in  pointing  out  the  needs  of  which  it  is  conscious,  as  "  the  alien 
conception  of  service  and  of  energy." — (N.  Macnicol,  Hibberi 
Journal,  October,  1907.)  We  rejoice  to  see  this  ideal  penetrat- 
ing and  modifying  the  non-Christian  religions.  Mrs.  Besant  has 
made  the  ideal  the  basis  of  a  society  within  Hinduism,  The  Sons 
and  The  Daughters  of  India.  As  the  journal  of  the  new  society 
tells  us: 

This  order  consists  of  men  and  women  of  all  ages,  the  elders 
seeking  by  sympathy  and  good  counsel  to  guide  into  channels 
useful  to  the  country  the  energies  of  the  younger,  and  endeavour- 
ing to  help  them  to  that  self-discipline  and  self-sacrifice  which 
alone  make  the  citizen  worthy  to  be  free.  To  this  end  it  is 
sought  to  wed  practice  to  theory :  by  the  definite  and  daily  ren- 
dering of  service,  thus  building  the  habit  of  helpfulness  by 
awakening  the  desire  to  be  useful  and  suggesting  channels  along 
which  that  desire  may  realise  itself  in  action ;  by  cultivating  the 
sense  of  duty  and  responsibility,  without  which  Liberty  becomes 
a  danger  alike  to  the  individual  and  the  State.   .    .    . 

The  following  is  the  Pledge  of  the  Order,  to  be  taken  in  a 
duly  constituted  Lodge,  presided  over  by  the  responsible  member 
of  the  Chapter,  or  by  a  Warden  appointed  by  him  for  the  pur- 
pose: 

"  I  promise  to  treat  as  Brothers  Indians  of  every  religion  and 
every  province,  to  make  Service  the  dominant  Ideal  of  my  life, 
and  therefore:  To  seek  the  public  good  before  personal  advan- 
tage ;  to  protect  the  helpless,  defend  the  oppressed,  teach  the 
ignorant,  raise  the  down-trodden ;  to  choose  some  definite  line  of 


274  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

public  usefulness,  and  to  labour  thereon ;  to  perform  every  day 
at  least  one  act  of  service ;  to  pursue  our  ideals  by  law-abiding 
methods  only ;  to  be  a  good  citizen  of  my  municipality  or  district, 
my  province,  the  Motherland,  and  the  Empire.  To  all  this 
I  pledge  myself,  in  the  presence  of  the  Supreme  Lord,  to  our 
Chief,  our  Brotherhood,  and  our  country,  that  I  may  be  a  true 
Son  of  India."  It  is  an  honourable  obligation  on  the  part  of 
every  member,  pledged  and  unpledged,  to  repeat  daily  the  Chain 
of  Union,  as  follows : 

"  May  the  One  Lord  of  the  Universe,  worshipped  under 
many  names,  pour  into  the  hearts  of  the  Brothers  and  Sisters 
of  this  Order,  and  through  them  into  India,  the  Spirit  of  Unity 
and  of  Service." — (Quoted  in  The  Pioneer,  Allahabad,  October 
26,  1908.) 

If  any  one  will  really  do  the  work  of  Christ,  he  will  begin 
to  see  the  word  of  Christ.  And  whoever  adopts  the  principle 
of  sacrificial  service  as  the  law  of  life  borrows  an  original  con- 
ception of  Christianity  of  which  the  non-Christian  religions  did 
not  know. 

(4)  Christ  and  Christ  alone  rose  from  the  dead.  The  idea 
and  principle  of  resurrection  are  in  Christianity  alone.  Dr. 
Lloyd  finds  more  in  the  non-Christian  religions  than  some  are  able 
to  find,  but  in  the  resurrection  he  finds  what  was  the  unique, 
what  to  St.  Paul,  too,  was  an  original  and  accrediting  distinction 
in  Christianity.  "  During  the  five  centuries  immediately  before 
the  Christian  era,"  says  Dr.  Lloyd  in  one  of  the  most  striking 
of  recent  books  on  comparative  religion,  "  God's  Truth  was 
being  gradually  revealed ;  here  a  truth  and  there  a  truth ;  in 
many  fragments  and  in  many  ways,  as  nations  and  peoples  were 
able  to  bear  the  light.  Christ  took  to  Himself  and  combined 
in  His  own  person  all  that  had  hitherto  been  revealed  and 
known.  The  unifying  factor  was  not  the  Incarnation,  nor  the 
Virgin  Birth,  nor  the  Life  of  Benevolence,  nor  the  words  of 
Wisdom  and  Love.  All  these  were  to  be  found  in  Hinduism,  in 
Buddhism,  in  Confucianism,  in  Greek  philosophy.  But  when 
the  Incarnate  Son  of  God,  born  of  Mary,  baptised  in  Jordan, 
and  tempted  of  Satan,  after  a  life  spent  in  works  of  mercy  and 
words  of  love,  faced  death  rather  than  be  untrue  to  principle, 
and  not  only  faced  death  but  conquered  it  by  Resurrection  and 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  275 

Ascension,  it  was  known  at  once  that  He  had  gathered  all  things 
into  Himself,  and  that  there  was  no  further  need  of  any  partial 
or  fragmentary  Gospel." — (Lloyd,  "  Wheat  Among  the  Tares," 
p.  236.)  This  does  not  purport  to  be  a  full  view  of  Christianity, 
but  it  does  set  forth  the  uniqueness  of  its  great  central  fact, 
which  has  no  parallel  as  a  fact  in  any  other  religion,  and  from 
which  springs  the  triumphant  power  of  our  Faith. 

5.  And  now,  in  the  fifth  place,  in  our  comparison  of  the 
world's  religions,  we  find  not  only  that  Christianity  has  all  the 
good  and  lacks  all  the  evils  of  the  non-Christian  religions,  and 
that  it  has  additional  good  which  they  want,  but  we  find  also  and 
in  consequence  that  they  are  inadequate  to  meet  the  world's 
needs. 

For,  looking  at  the  matter  more  generally,  what  are  the  great 
needs  of  men  that  a  religion  must  meet? 

Man  has  his  intellectual  needs.  As  Mr.  Ruskin  says  in  a 
note,  there  are  three  great  questions  that  inevitably  confront 
every  man:  Where  did  I  come  from?  Whither  am  I  going? 
What  can  I  know?  Men  must  have  those  questions  answered. 
All  over  the  world  every  honest,  thoughtful  man  is  confronted 
by  the  great  problems  of  his  origin  and  his  duty  and  his  destiny. 
The  non-Christian  religions  have  no  satisfying  message  to  speak 
to  such  seeking  men.  Their  philosophies  of  the  world  may 
stand  for  a  little  while  in  any  metaphysical  discussion,  but  they 
collapse,  they  are  passing  before  our  eyes,  at  the  touch  of  the 
physical  sciences.  Philosophies  of  the  world  that  cannot  endure 
contact  with  reality  cannot  satisfy  the  intellectual  needs  of  men. 

The  non-Christian  religions  are  inadequate  to  meet  the  moral 
needs  of  men.  In  the  first  place,  the  non-Christian  religions  are 
not  able  to  present  a  perfect  moral  ideal  to  men.  Mr.  Bosworth 
Smith  goes  on,  in  the  same  chapter  which  I  quoted  a  moment 
ago,  to  say:  "When  I  speak  of  the  ideal  life  of  Moham- 
medanism, I  must  not  be  misunderstood.  There  is  in  Moham- 
medanism no  ideal  life  in  the  true  sense  of  the  word,  for  Mo- 
hammed's character  was  admitted  by  himself  to  be  a  weak  and 
erring  one.  It  was  disfigured  by  at  least  one  huge  moral  blemish ; 
and  exactly  in  so  far  as  his  life  has,  in  spite  of  his  earnest  and 


276  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

reiterated  protestations,  been  made  an  example  to  be  followed, 
has  that  vice  been  perpetuated.  But  in  Christianity  the  case  is 
different.  The  words,  '  Which  of  you  convinceth  me  of  sin  ? ' 
forced  from  the  mouth  of  Him  Who  was  meek  and  lowly  of 
heart,  by  the  wickedness  of  those  who,  priding  themselves  on 
being  Abraham's  children,  never  did  the  works  of  Abraham,  are 
a  definite  challenge  to  the  world.  That  challenge  has  been  for 
nineteen  centuries  before  the  eyes  of  unfriendly,  as  well  as  of 
believing  readers,  and  it  has  never  yet  been  fairly  met;  and  at 
this  moment,  by  the  confession  of  friend  and  foe  alike,  the 
character  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  stands  alone  in  its  spotless  purity 
and  its  unapproachable  majesty."  And  this  is  true  of  all  the 
non-Christian  religions.  Confucius  never  dreamed  of  setting 
himself  up  as  a  moral  ideal  for  men.  The  idea  never  crossed 
Buddha's  thought;  and  as  for  many  Hindu  gods,  we  are  better 
gods  ourselves  than  they  are.  I  mean  that  our  moral  characters 
are  superior  to  the  moral  characters  of  these  Hindu  gods.  Such 
religions  cannot  satisfy  the  moral  needs  of  men. 

Not  only  do  the  non-Christian  religions  erect  before  the  eyes 
of  men  no  perfect  moral  ideal,  but  they  do  not  offer  to  men  any 
living,  transforming  power  by  which  the  ideals  that  they  do 
present  can  be  realised.  No  great  non-Christian  teacher  ever 
spoke  to  men  such  words  as  Christ  spoke.  "  He  that  eateth 
my  flesh  and  drinketh  my  blood  hath  eternal  life."  "  Come  unto 
me,  all  ye  that  labour  and  are  heavy  laden,  and  I  will  give  you 
rest."  "  I,  if  I  be  lifted  up  from  the  earth,  will  draw  all 
men  unto  me."  Even  if  the  non-Christian  religions  did  make 
upon  men  a  perfect  ethical  demand,  of  what  value  is  it  to  a 
man  to  have  a  perfect  ethical  demand  made  upon  him?  His 
own  conscience  already  makes  ethical  demands  upon  him  beyond 
his  ability  to  reply.  What  men  need  is  not  a  fresh  moral  de- 
mand. What  men  need  is  a  fresh  moral  re-enforcement,  a  power 
in  their  wills  to  enable  them  to  attain  the  ideals  which  stand  out 
before  them.  Jesus  Christ  did  not  come  to  create  a  new  set  of 
moral  obligations ;  He  did  not  come  to  multiply  the  number  of 
"  oughts  "  under  which  life  was  to  be  lived ;  He  came  to  give 
men  more  power  to  fulfil  the  "  oughts  "  under  which  they  already 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  277 

lived.  The  non-Christian  religions  are  impotent  to  meet  the 
moral  needs  of  man,  because  not  only  do  they  hold  up  before 
him  no  perfect  moral  ideal,  but  they  offer  him  no  sufficient  power 
to  attain  even  the  best  ideal  which  they  do  present. 

They  are  inadequate  to  meet  his  moral  needs  because  there 
is  in  them  no  just  conception  of  sin.  A  religion  that  has  no  idea 
of  a  holy  God  cannot  have  any  idea  of  a  sinful  man.  It  is 
because  under  the  non-Christian  religions  men  have  no  concep- 
tion of  such  a  God  as  Christ  disclosed  that  they  have  never 
sat  down  in  the  midst  of  shame  and  sorrow  at  the  hideousness 
of  their  sin.  And,  of  course,  with  no  message  showing  man 
the  reality  of  sin,  the  non-Christian  religions  have  no  message 
of  deliverance  and  of  forgiveness. 

And  further,  the  non-Christian  religions  are  inadequate  to 
man's  moral  needs  because  they  are  all  morally  chaotic.  We 
mean  more  than  one  thing  by  that.  We  mean,  for  one  thing, 
that  there  never  was  a  consonance  between  the  best  ideal  and 
the  reality  in  the  non-Christian  religions.  No  great  non-Chris- 
tian religious  teacher  ever  lived  up  to  his  own  ethical  ideals, 
and  that  chasm  which  was  real  in  the  beginning  is  becoming 
a  wider  and  wider  chasm  with  the  years.  It  is  perfectly  true 
that  there  is  no  Christian  country  in  the  world;  it  is  true  that 
there  is  no  society  that  entirely  embodies  in  itself  the  principles 
of  Christ.  But  there  is  this  great  difference  between  the  Chris- 
tian societies  and  the  non-Christian  societies.  The  gulf  between 
the  ideal  and  the  actual  in  the  non-Christian  world  is  widening 
every  year,  while  the  gulf  in  the  Christian  world  is  narrowing 
with  each  passing  generation.  The  people  of  the  non-Christian 
lands,  most  of  them,  have  sunk  ethically  below  the  level  in 
which  they  were  when  their  great  religious  teachers  arose. 
There  never  was  an  era  in  the  history  of  the  world  when  Chris- 
tian lands  were  as  near  to  the  moral  ideals  of  Christ  as  they 
are  to-day.  It  is  true  that  our  Christianity  is  not  pure,  but  true 
Christianity  has  in  itself  the  self-purifying  power;  and  whereas 
all  the  non-Christian  religions,  instead  of  being  steps  upward,  are 
degenerating  from  the  catastrophic  moral  upheavals  from  which 
they  sprang,  the  Christian  religion  moves  on  in  a  steady  ascend- 


278  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

ing  stream  toward  the  great  fountain  from  which  first  of  all  it 
came. 

Yet  once  again,  the  non-Christian  religions  break  down  at 
the  central  and  fundamental  point.  They  have  not  perceived 
the  inviolable  sacredness  of  truth.  "  Verily,"  said  Mohammed, 
"  a  lie  is  allowable  in  three  cases :  to  women,  to  reconcile  friends, 
and  in  war."  And  the  god  Krishna  himself,  in  one  of  the  Hindu 
sacred  books,  the  Mahabharata,  declares  that  there  are  five 
different  situations  in  which  falsehood  may  be  used :  in  marriage, 
for  the  gratification  of  lust,  to  save  life,  to  secure  one's  property, 
or  for  the  sake  of  a  Brahman.  In  these  cases,  says  Krishna, 
falsehood  may  be  uttered.  Let  the  story  of  "  The  Forty-seven 
Ronins  "  testify  to  the  failure  of  Japanese  religion  to  perceive 
and  enforce  the  inviolability  of  truth.  "  Lie  not  one  to  another," 
says  Christianity's  clean  and  unqualified  injunction.  "  Lie  not," 
says  Buddhism,  but  adds  the  truth-annihilating  condition ;  "  to 
constitute  a  lie,  there  must  be  the  discovery  by  the  person 
deceived  that  what  has  been  told  him  is  not  true." — (Hardy, 
"  Manual  of  Buddhism,"  p.  486.)  Confucius  himself  broke  an 
oath  and  excused  it.  (Faber,  "  China  in  the  Light  of  History," 
p.  63.)  Now,  if  there  is  one  place  where  religion  and  the  men 
of  religion  meet  their  certain  testing,  it  is  here.  Here  are  two 
of  the  great  non-Christian  religions  which  deliberately  proclaim 
that  no  man  is  under  obligation  to  tell  the  truth  to  women.  All 
proclaim  that  there  are  cases  in  which  lies  are  justified.  But 
Christianity  declares  that  there  is  one  thing  that  to  God  Himself 
is  absolutely  and  inviolately  sacred ;  that  God  cannot  lie,  and  that 
what  God  cannot  do  no  religion  dare  pronounce  to  be  allowable 
in  the  sons  of  God.  Any  religion  or  religious  teacher  proclaim- 
ing the  possibility,  the  allowability  of  lies,  excavates  the  founda- 
tions under  human  confidence,  under  all  living  faith  in  a  real 
God,  and  makes  impossible  an  answer  to  the  moral  needs  of 
men. 

And,  furthermore,  the  non-Christian  religions  are  inadequate 
to  meet  man's  moral  need  because  they  have  no  adequate  sanc- 
tions buttressing  morality.  You  cannot  support  morality  on 
the  basis  of  pantheism ;  it  liquefies  the  sanctions  of  morals.    You 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  279 

cannot  do  it  on  the  basis  of  such  a  hard  monotheism  as  Islam's, 
because  in  actual  fact  it  petrifies  the  moral  restraints.  Dr.  H. 
O.  Dwight,  long  of  Constantinople,  told  a  little  while  ago  of  a 
voyage  which  he  took  in  the  Levant  with  a  Turkish  official.  As 
they  sat  down  in  the  cabin  at  the  dinner  table  the  Turkish  official, 
inviting  Dr.  Dwight  to  drink  with  him,  said :  "  You  may  think 
it  strange  that  I,  a  Mohammedan,  should  ask  you,  a  Christian, 
to  drink  with  me,  when  wine-drinking  is  forbidden  by  our  re- 
ligion. I  will  tell  you  how  I  dare  to  do  this  thing."  He  filled 
his  glass  and  held  it  up,  looking  at  the  beautiful  colour  of  it, 
and  said :  "  Now,  if  I  say  that  it  is  right  to  drink  this  wine,  I 
deny  God's  commandments  to  men,  and  He  would  punish  me 
in  hell  for  the  blasphemy.  But  I  take  up  this  glass,  admitting 
that  God  has  commanded  me  not  to  drink  it,  and  that  I  sin  in 
drinking  it.  Then  I  drink  it  off,  so  casting  myself  on  the  mercy 
of  God.  For  our  religion  lets  me  know  that  God  is  too  merciful 
to  punish  me  for  doing  a  thing  which  I  wish  to  do,  when  I 
humbly  admit  that  to  do  it  breaks  His  commandments."  His 
religion  furnished  this  pasha  with  no  moral  restraints  or  power 
for  true  character.  The  simple  fact  is  that  the  pure  monotheistic 
faith  of  Islam  has  not  prevented  a  horrible  tarn  of  immorality 
over  all  the  Mohammedan  world.  Neither  that  lifeless  mono- 
theism nor  the  pantheism  of  other  non-Christian  religions  can 
furnish  the  sanctions  by  which  alone  moral  behaviour  can  be 
sustained. 

And  just  as  the  non-Christian  religions  are  inadequate  to 
meet  alike  the  intellectual  and  the  moral  needs  of  men,  so  they 
are  utterly  inadequate  to  meet  the  social  needs  of  men.  Re- 
ligions which  deny  to  one-half  of  society  the  right  to  the  truth 
cannot  meet  the  social  needs  of  mankind.  Religions  which  pro- 
claim that  women  may  be  lied  to  sinlessly  are  anti-social  in  the 
very  principles  upon  which  they  rest,  and  we  might  leave  the 
whole  case  against  the  adequacy  of  these  non-Christian  religions 
here.  There  is  in  no  one  of  the  non-Christian  religions  any 
thing  like  the  Christian  home.  A  woman  missionary  from  Japan 
spoke  recently  of  the  pathetic  desire  of  many  people  in  Japan 
to  learn  about  the  constitution  of  the  Western  home.     As  she 


280  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

went  to  and  fro,  she  said,  even  among  the  country  villages  she 
always  found  the  people  eager  to  sit  down  with  her  and  talk 
about  the  home.  They  had  heard  of  a  better  social  organisation 
than  theirs,  and  they  were  anxious  to  know  where  the  secret 
of  it  was  to  be  found.  More  than  one  Japanese  statesman  in 
earlier  days  beheld  a  revelation  in  Christian  home  life.  We  hold 
here  in  our  Christian  faith  the  one  secret  of  a  pure  social  life, 
in  the  matter  of  the  relation  of  sex  to  sex  and  of  the  adult  to 
the  child.  The  non-Christian  religions  condemn  women  in  prin- 
ciple or  legal  right  to  the  place  of  chattel  or  of  slave.  A  religion 
which  denies  to  woman  her  right  place  in  society,  which  even 
proclaims  that  no  woman,  as  a  woman,  can  be  saved,  as  Bud- 
dhism does  proclaim,  cannot  meet  the  social  needs  of  humanity. 
These  religions  cannot  meet  the  social  needs  of  men  because 
they  are  incapable  of,  and  inconsistent  with,  progress.  Now, 
there  are  three  great  elements  in  religion :  the  element  of  fellow- 
ship, the  element  of  dependence,  and  the  element  of  progress. 
The  non-Christian  religions  rest  on  man's  sense  of  dependence, 
but  they  have  no  message  to  deliver  to  his  need  of  fellowship, 
and  they  have  no  word  to  speak  to  his  need  of  progress.  Each 
one  of  the  non-Christian  religions  to-day  is  bound  up  with  a 
degenerating  civilisation ;  and  the  peoples  who  live  under  the 
non-Christian  religions  are  making  no  progress,  are  even  slip- 
ping socially  backward,  save  as  they  break  free  from  these  old 
restraints  and  feel  the  transforming  power  of  the  Christian 
principles.  This  is  true  of  Islam.  Is  it  not  a  significant  fact 
that  the  great  wastes  of  the  world  are  under  the  faith  of  Islam? 
Wherever  Mohammedanism  has  gone,  it  has  either  found  a 
desert  or  made  one.  Twelve  hundred  years  ago  it  bound  down 
all  human  life  in  the  Arabian  institutions  of  the  seventh  century, 
and  until  this  day,  and  so  long  as  Mohammedanism  abides  itself 
in  the  world,  progress  will  be  inconsistent  with  that  faith.  It  is 
as  Lord  Houghton  put  it: 

So  while  the  world  rolls  on  from  age  to  age 

And  realms  of  thought  expand, 
The  letter  stands  without  expanse  or  range, 

Stiff  as  a  dead  man's  hand. 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  281 

And  that  which  is  true  of  Mohammedanism  is  essentially  true 
of  all  the  non-Christian  religions.  Not  one  of  them  is  capable 
of,  or  consistent  with,  progress.  Japan  offers  no  exception. 
"  Japan,"  said  the  Japan  Mail,  not  long  ago,  "  is  an  interesting 
country.  It  has  been  an  interesting  country  for  the  last  forty 
years.  The  moribund  condition  of  its  only  religious  creed  is 
certainly  not  the  least  interesting  feature  of  its  modern  career." 
Japan's  progress  has  sprung,  not  from  Buddhism,  but  from  an 
abandonment  or  modification  of  Buddhism. 

At  the  celebration  in  Tokyo  in  October,  1909,  of  the  semi- 
centennial of  the  coming  of  Protestant  missions  to  Japan,  Count 
Okuma  frankly  avowed  the  futility  of  Buddhism  and  the  effi- 
ciency of  Christianity  as  an  agency  of  human  progress: 

He  said,  in  brief,  that  he  was  glad  of  this  opportunity  to 
express  a  word  of  hearty  congratulation  to  those  who  were  as- 
sembled to  celebrate  this  semi-centennial  of  Christian  work  in 
Japan.  Though  not  himself  a  professed  Christian,  he  confessed 
to  have  received  great  influence  from  that  creed,  as  have  so 
many  others  throughout  Japan.  This  is  a  most  important  anni- 
versary for  the  country.  It  represents  the  work  of  one  whole 
age  in  our  history,  during  which  most  marvellous  changes  have 
taken  place.  He  came  in  contact  with,  and  received  great  im- 
pulses from,  some  of  the  missionaries  of  that  early  period,  par- 
ticularly from  Dr.  Verbeck,  who  was  his  teacher  in  English  and 
history  and  the  Bible,  and  whose  great  and  virtuous  influence 
he  can  never  forget.  Though  he  could  do  little  direct  evangelis- 
tic work  then,  all  his  work  was  Christian,  and  in  everything  he  did 
his  Christlike  spirit  was  revealed.  The  coming  of  missionaries 
to  Japan  was  the  means  of  linking  this  country  to  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  spirit  to  which  the  heart  of  Japan  has  always  responded. 
The  success  of  Christian  work  in  Japan  can  be  measured  by  the 
extent  to  which  it  has  been  able  to  infuse  the  Anglo-Saxon  and 
the  Christian  spirit  into  the  nation.  It  has  been  the  means  of 
putting  into  these  fifty  years  an  advance  equivalent  to  that  of 
a  hundred  years.  Japan  has  a  history  of  2,500  years,  and  1,500 
years  ago  had  advanced  in  civilisation  and  domestic  arts,  but 
never  took  wide  views  nor  entered  upon  wide  work.  Only  by 
the  coming  of  the  West  in  its  missionary  representatives,  and 
by  the  spread  of  the  Gospel,  did  the  nation  enter  upon  world- 
wide thoughts  and  world-wide  work.  This  is  a  great  result  of 
the  Christian  spirit.     To  be  sure,  Japan  had  her  religions,  and 


282  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

Buddhism  prospered  greatly ;  but  this  prosperity  was  largely 
through  political  means.  Now  this  creed  has  been  practically 
rejected  by  the  better  classes  who,  being  spiritually  thirsty,  have 
nothing  to  drink. —  (The  Japan  Daily  Mail,  October  9,  1909.) 

And  yet  once  more,  the  non-Christian  religions  are  inade- 
quate to  the  social  needs  of  men  because  every  one  of  them 
denies  the  unity  of  mankind,  Hinduism  with  its  caste,  Con- 
fucianism with  its  conceit,  Islam  with  its  fanatical  bigotry,  and 
Buddhism  with  its  damnation  of  all  women.  It  was  given  to 
Buddha  in  his  destiny  never  to  be  born  in  hell,  or  as  vermin, 
or  as  a  woman.  "  A  Brahman,"  says  the  Code  of  Manu,  the 
highest  Hindu  lawbook,  "  may  take  possession  of  the  goods  of 
a  Sudra  with  perfect  peace  of  mind,  since  nothing  at  all  belongs 
to  the  Sudra  as  his  own."  "  The  system  of  caste  which  is  one 
of  the  most  characteristic  institutions  of  Hinduism  and  the 
basis  of  Hindu  Society,"  says  the  Bishop  of  Madras,  Dr.  White- 
head, "  is  a  direct  denial  of  the  brotherhood  of  man.  The  idea 
that  the  Brahman  is  the  brother  of  the  pariah  is  contrary  to 
the  first  principles  of  Hinduism,  and  abhorrent  to  the  Hindu 
mind.  Whatever  enthusiasm  there  may  be  for  brotherhood  in 
the  abstract,  it  stops  short  of  the  brotherhood  of  the  Brahman 
and  the  pariah.  To  apply  to  Hindu  society  the  principle  of 
Christian  brotherhood  would  mean  a  social  revolution ;  and  it 
is  for  this  practical  reason  that  the  spread  of  Christianity  in 
India  is  so  bitterly  opposed.  The  Western  dress  has  little  or 
nothing  to  do  with  it:  the  real  ground  of  the  opposition  is  the 
fundamental  principle  of  the  brotherhood  of  man."  To  be  sure, 
the  phrase,  "  The  fatherhood  of  God  and  the  brotherhood  of 
man,"  is  a  common  phrase  throughout  the  world,  but  both  of 
these  great  conceptions  are  the  contributions  of  the  Christian 
revelation. 

And,  just  as  the  non-Christian  religions  are  inadequate  to 
meet  the  intellectual  and  the  moral  and  the  social  needs  of  man, 
so  they  are  inadequate  to  meet  his  spiritual  needs.  For  one 
thing,  all  these  non-Christian  religions  are  practically  atheistic. 
Dr.  Dwight's  pasha's  god  amounts  to  no  god  at  all.  Hinduism 
has  333,000,000  gods,  but  the  man  who  has  333,000,000  gods 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  283 

has  no  god  except  himself.  Buddhism,  in  the  southern  form  at 
least,  deliberately  denies  the  existence  of  any  god.  "  Buddha," 
says  Max  Muller,  "  denies  the  existence  not  only  of  the  Creator, 
but  of  any  absolute  being.  As  regards  the  idea  of  a  personal 
Creator,  Buddha  seems  merciless."  These  great  non-Christian 
religions  have  no  satisfying  word  to  speak  to  man  about  God. 
They  represent,  as  they  actually  are — and  this  is  the  most  charita- 
ble view  that  we  can  take  of  them — they  represent  the  groping 
search  of  man  after  light.  They  show  us  the  non-Christian 
peoples  stumbling  blindly  around  the  great  altar-stairs  of  God, 
the  more  pitiably,  as  Fleming  Stevenson  said,  because  they  do 
not  know  that  they  are  blind.  As  over  against  all  these,  Chris- 
tianity stands  as  the  loving  quest  of  God  after  man,  the  full, 
rich  revealing  of  His  light  and  life,  the  unfolding  of  His  love 
toward  His  children,  whom  He  has  come  forth  to  seek  in  a 
way  of  which  none  of  the  non-Christian  religions  has  ever 
conceived.  They  are  inadequate  to  meet  the  spiritual  needs  of 
men,  because  they  have  never  taught  men  to  say  "  Father."  By 
so  much  as  we  love  to  call  Him  Father,  by  so  much  as  we  de- 
light to  kneel  down  alone,  in  all  the  joy  of  our  own  dear  and 
loving  intimacy  with  Him,  and  call  Him  by  the  precious  name 
in  which  Christ  revealed  Him,  by  so  much  are  we  under  the 
noble  duty  to  make  our  Father  known  to  all  our  Father's  chil- 
dren throughout  the  world. 

And  these  non-Christian  religions  are  inadequate  to  meet 
man's  spiritual  need,  also,  because  they  speak  to  him  no  word 
of  hope.  Mohammedanism  has  no  word  of  hope  to  speak  to 
him.  When  the  true  man's  heart  has  revolted  from  its  idea  of 
a  sensual  paradise,  what  can  he  say  except  what  poor  Omar 
said? 

One  moment  in  annihilation's  waste, 
One  moment  of  the  well  of  life  to  taste. 
The  stars  are  setting,  and  the  caravan 
Starts  for  the  dawn  of  nothing.    Oh,  make  haste. 

The  folk  lore  songs  of  India,  revealing  the  true  heart  of  the 
people,  are  no  brighter : 


284  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

How  many  births  are  past  I  cannot  tell ; 

How  many  yet  to  come  no  man  can  say. 
But  this  alone  I  know,  and  know  full  well, 

That  pain  and  grief  embitter  all  the  way. 

In  those  first  days,  when  Christianity  first  shone  ori  men,  men 
realised  that  the  great  hope  was  the  hope  of  Christ,  that  those 
who  were  without  Christ  were  without  God,  and  also  without 
hope.  It  is  narrow  to  speak  so  to-day;  but  we  are  content  to 
be  as  narrow  as  Jesus  Christ,  the  only  Saviour;  and  as  Paul, 
the  greatest  heart  that  ever  went  out  to  make  Him  known  to 
the  world.  The  world  without  Christ  is  a  spiritually  hopeless 
world. 

We  cannot  study  its  religions  and  believe  otherwise.  Opti- 
mistic and  buoyant  of  hope  as  he  was,  Dr.  Barrows,  who  organ- 
ised the  comparison  of  religions  in  the  Chicago  Parliament  of 
Religions,  came  to  the  same  belief.  "  The  world  needs  the 
Christian  religion.  I  have  given  five  of  the  best  years  of  my 
life  to  the  examination  of  this  question,  and  I  have  had  oppor- 
tunities, such  as  no  other  man  ever  had,  of  seeing  and  knowing 
the  best  side  of  the  ethnic  religions.  I  count  as  my  friends 
Parsees  and  Hindus,  Buddhists  and  Confucianists,  Shintoists 
and  Mohammedans.  I  know  what  they  say  about  themselves. 
I  have  looked  at  their  religions  on  the  ideal  side,  as  well  as 
the  practical,  and  I  know  this:  That  the  very  best  which  is  in 
them,  the  very  best  which  these  well-meaning  men  have  shown 
to  us,  is  a  reflex  from  Christianity,  and  that  what  they  lack, 
and  the  lack  is  very  serious,  is  what  the  Christian  Gospel  alone 
can  impart;  and  I  know  that  beneath  the  shining  example  of 
the  elect  few  in  the  non-Christian  world  there  is  a  vast  area 
of  idolatry  and  pollution  and  unrest  and  superstition  and  cruelty, 
which  can  never  be  healed  by  the  forces  which  are  found  in 
the  non-Christian  systems." 

6.  We  are  confirmed  accordingly  in  the  conviction  with  which, 
as  we  freely  admitted,  the  missionary  enterprise  starts  out,  with- 
out which  there  would  not  be  any  missionary  enterprise,  that 
Christianity  alone  is  adequate  for  all  the  needs  of  the  world,  and 
that  it  is  to  all  the  world  that  it  must  be  carried.     We  believe 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  285 

that  it  is  adequate  because,  to  recapitulate,  a  comparison  of 
Christianity  with  other  religions  shows  that  it  has  a  unique  and 
superior  conception  of  God.  It  "  has  such  a  conception  of  God 
as  no  other  religion  has  attained ;  and  what  is  more,  it  proclaims 
and  brings  to  pass  such  an  experience  of  God  as  humanity  has 
never  elsewhere  known.  .  .  .  The  God  of  Christianity  is  one, 
the  sole  source,  Lord  and  end  of  all.  He  is  holy,  being  in 
Himself  the  character  that  is  the  sole  standard  for  all  beings. 
He  is  love,  reaching  out  to  save  the  world  from  sin  and  fill 
it  with  His  own  goodness.  He  is  wise,  knowing  how  to  accom- 
plish His  heart's  desire.  He  is  Father  in  heart,  looking  upon 
His  creatures  as  His  own  and  seeking  their  welfare.  All  this 
truth  concerning  Himself  He  has  made  known  in  Jesus  Christ, 
the  Saviour  of  the  world,  in  whom  His  redemptive  will  has 
found  expression  and  His  saving  love  has  come  forth  to  all 
mankind.  .  .  .  The  conception  of  God  with  which  Christianity 
addresses  the  world  is  the  best  that  man  can  form  or  entertain." — 
(Clarke,  "A  Study  of  Christian  Missions,"  pp.  10,  11,  18.) 
And  it  is  a  conception  belonging  to  Christianity  alone.  The 
world  can  only  know  its  God  through  Christianity.  Other  re- 
ligions express  the  sense  of  human  dependence.  They  do  not 
give  the  longing  souls  their  God.  Other  religions  speak  of  a 
higher  truth,  as  the  Buddhists  do  in  their  appeal,  of  "  The  great 
truth  shining  above,"  but  only  one  reveals  that  truth  in  a  loving, 
personal  God,  "  Our  Father."  Other  religions  utter  man's  feel- 
ings of  helplessness,  but  only  one  tells  of  a  Divine  Saviour  who 
offers  man  forgiveness  of  sin  and  salvation  through  His  death, 
and  Who  is  now  a  living  person  working  in  and  with  all  who 
believe  in  Him  to  make  them  holy  and  righteous  and  pure. 

Christianity  also  is  the  only  religion  of  moral  efficiency  and 
power.  The  Japanese  papers  candidly  acknowledged  the  in- 
feriority of  Buddhism  in  its  practical  ministry  to  the  soldiers 
in  the  late  war.  As  the  Kyokawai  Jiji,  a  Buddhist  journal, 
said : 

Numerically  speaking,  Buddhism  far  outranks  Christianity; 
but,  by  reason  of  actual  work  accomplished,  the  balance  of  power 
is  in  favour  of  the  Christians.     General  hatred  against  Chris- 


286  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

tianity  is  passing  away,  and  the  belief  that  it  is  better  adapted 
to  the  new  condition  of  things  is  daily  gaining  ground.  Buddhist 
customs  and  rites  are  becoming  more  and  more  alien  to  the 
interests  of  society  and  Buddhist  temples  and  priests  are  often 
the  subject  of  public  ridicule. 

The  war-correspondents  declare  the  unfitness  and  inability  of 
the  Buddhist  priests,  and  the  more  thoughtful  of  these  priests 
who  are  at  the  front  lament  bitterly  their  co-workers'  ignorance, 
senselessness,  and  idleness,  which  have  caused  the  soldiers  to 
ridicule  them  and  also  to  become  tired  of  them.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  quarters  of  the  Christians  are  regarded  as  a  paradise 
for  the  soldiers,  and  they  are  welcome  everywhere. 

The  enormous  amount  of  Y200,ooo  has  been  expended  by  the 
Honganji  (the  largest  Buddhist  sect  in  Japan)  for  the  work 
among  the  soldiers,  but  it  is  far  inferior  to  the  work  of  the 
Christian  Association,  whose  expenditure  amounts  only  to  a  few 
thousand  yen.  The  work  of  the  Christians  has  attained  such 
success  that  it  has  reached  the  Emperor's  ear;  while  that  of 
the  Buddhists  is  always  attended  by  debts  and  disturbances. 

When  Shaku  Soyen,  one  of  the  representatives  of  Japanese 
Buddhism  in  Chicago  at  the  Parliament  of  Religions,  came 
recently  to  Gobo  to  preach,  one  of  his  old  students,  Mr.  Iwa- 
hashi,  went  to  call  on  him,  and  remarked :  "  I  have  now  become 
a  Christian,  and  am  preaching  Jesus."  Shaku  replied :  "  The 
Christian  religion  is  a  religion  that  has  a  power  over  the  lives 
of  men  which  I  long  to  see  in  our  Buddhism."  This  superior 
moral  power  of  Christianity  is  due  to  the  fact  that  it  is  the 
only  religion  which  identifies  religion  and  ethics,  which  makes 
righteousness  the  life  and  faith  of  men,  and  which  utters  itself 
in  holy  obedience  and  service.  (See  article  in  The  Independent, 
December  15,  1898,  by  A.  H.  Bradford,  "  Does  the  World  Need 
Christianity?")  Christianity  is  the  one  lifting  religion,  which 
takes  hold  of  classes  and  of  races,  as  of  men,  and  gives  them 
a  new  life.  As  a  "  Brahman  "  wrote  in  The  Madras  Mail 
(Quoted  in  "  White  Already  to  Harvest,"  May,  1901)  : 

It  is  above  this  degrading  and  narrow  influence  of  caste  and 
custom  that  the  Hindu  religion  must  rise,  if  it  is  to  fulfil  its 
function  as  a  social  institution  apart  from  its  function  as  a 
force  promoting  the  affinity  between  soul  and  God.  The  Hindus 
have  seldom  recognised  religion  as  a  social  institution,  with  the 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  287 

material  happiness  of  man  among  its  legitimate  ends.  The  Hindu 
religion  never  cared  to  organise  itself  in  order  to  be  able  to 
control  the  secular  interests  of  society,  and  consequently,  unlike 
Christianity,  it  is  losing  its  hold,  if  it  has  ever  acquired  a  hold, 
on  the  minds  of  the  great  masses.  There  was  never  in  India 
any  such  organisation  as  a  Hindu  Church,  corresponding  to  the 
Christian  Church  in  Western  countries.  The  mats  and  monas- 
teries established  here  and  there  are  centres  of  spiritual  educa- 
tion, to  keep  alive  ecclesiastical  authority  and  ancient  tenets ; 
but  they  never  professed  to  concern  themselves  with  the  general 
condition  of  the  people.  In  the  Western  countries  modern 
opinion  insists  on  the  Christian  Church  taking  part — a  leading 
and  effective  part — in  every  good  work  done  for  the  alleviation 
of  suffering  and  promotion  of  happiness;  and  its  past  history 
is  a  laudable  record  of  work  done  for  the  elevation  of  the  poor, 
the  redress  of  social  wrongs,  and  the  general  progress  of  hu- 
manity. The  Hindu  religion  boasts  of  no  such  record,  and  if 
any  modernisation  of  it  is  possible,  it  should  abandon  its  attitude 
of  passive  exclusiveness,  of  cold  indifference  to  the  grossest  and 
most  cruel  wrongs  that  caste  and  custom  inflict  on  the  poorer 
classes.  It  should  develop  new  energies  and  come  forward  as 
a  friend  of  the  poor  and  oppressed.  It  is  this  practical  spirit 
of  charity  and  friendliness  to  suffering  humanity  that  must  per- 
meate the  modernised  Hindu  religion.  What  thought  educated 
Hindus  of  modern  times  may  give  to  their  religion  must  be  chiefly 
dominated  by  this  spirit,  which  is  in  entire  accord  with  the 
grandest  and  the  most  earnest  teaching  of  all  true  religion.  In 
proportion  as  religion  fulfils  this  great  function,  it  will  justify 
the  devotion  it  exacts  from  intelligent  minds.  It  is  this  su- 
periority of  the  Christian  over  the  Hindu  religion  that  is  under- 
mining its  hold  on  the  people.  It  has  already  lost  a  good  deal 
of  its  old  ground.  When  it  was  safe  against  all  foreign  influence, 
it  could  tyrannise  over  the  poor  as  it  liked.  But  the  Moham- 
medan religion,  by  taking  the  poorer  class  under  its  shelter  and 
by  its  attack  on  the  Hindu  caste  system,  first  shook  the  social 
basis  of  Hindu  religion ;  and  Christianity,  with  its  organised  and 
infinitely  superior  resources,  is  delivering  harder  blows.  En- 
lightened and  patriotic  Hindus  should  take  warning  betimes  and 
place  the  religion  of  their  ancestors  on  a  more  practical  and 
utilitarian  footing,  if  its  future  is  to  be  saved  and  its  position 
strengthened  among  the  great  religions  of  civilised  mankind. 

And  Christianity  is  not  only  found  to  be  the  one  religion  of 
power.     It  is  found  also  to  be  the  one  universal  religion.     It 


288  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

cannot  be  otherwise  for  it  is  the  only  religion  with  a  universal 
God,  and  it  is  the  only  religion  which  provides  for  ceaseless 
progress  and  for  the  ever-enlarging  knowledge  of  God  and  life. 
"  That  is  exactly  what  is  wanting  in  the  old  religions.  There 
lacks  in  every  one  of  them  the  principles  of  progress,  and  that 
element  of  universality  which  is  Christianity's  distinctive  glory. 
They  have  no  special  promise  in  them.  Their  fatal  lack  of 
motive  power,  their  imperfect  morality,  and  their  incapacity 
to  give  vitality  and  vigour  to  their  principles,  is  the  secret  of 
their  failure.  Social  degeneracy  is  the  historic  outcome.  There 
is  no  trace  in  them  of  any  '  modern  element '  of  universal  adap- 
tation to  the  wants  of  men.  They  have  reflected  the  climate, 
country,  race,  time,  in  which  they  arose ;  and  whatever  influence 
they  may  have  exerted,  they  did  not  draw  nations  out  of  the 
beaten  track  in  which  they  had  lived.  '  Notwithstanding  the 
material  and  political  revolutions  which  they  underwent,'  says 
M.  Guizot,  '  these  ancient  nations  followed  in  the  same  ways, 
and  retained  the  same  propensities  as  before.'  For  the  old 
creeds  are  not  fitted  to  harmonise  with  the  intellectual,  social, 
and  moral  progress  of  the  modern  world." — (Slater,  "The 
Higher  Hinduism,"  p.  283  f ;  Hume,  "  Missions  from  the  Modern 
View,"  p.  13  ff.) 

Whether,  accordingly,  Christianity  is  to  be  called  absolute 
or  not  we  will  not  dispute.  We  only  believe  that  it  is  absolutely 
needed  by  all  the  world,  and  that  the  world  must  wait  for  its 
satisfaction,  for  the  completion  of  all  its  vague  yearnings,  of  its 
half-lights,  of  its  hopes,  which  are  half-despairs,  and  for  the  purg- 
ing of  its  sins  and  the  lighting  of  its  darkness,  which  is  itself  the 
promise  of  light,  until  Christ  comes  to  it  carried  by  those  who 
know  Him  and  God  in  Him,  and  in  Him  as  the  light  of  all  the 
world.  (See  Westcott,  "Religious  Thought  in  the  West,"  ch. 
on  "  The  Absoluteness  of  Christianity.") 

If  what  I  have  been  setting  forth  is  the  truth,  then  the 
missionary  enterprise  is  morally  justified  by  the  comparison  of 
Christianity  with  the  non-Christian  religions.  That  is  expressing 
it  tamely.  The  enterprise  is  not  only  morally  justified,  it  is 
morally  necessary.     Christians  owe  it  both  to  their  God  and  to 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  289 

the  world  to  carry  the  enterprise  to  completion.  If  Christianity 
is  such  a  religion  as  this,  it  "  deserves  possession  of  the  world. 
It  has  the  right  to  offer  itself  boldly  to  all  men,  and  to  displace 
all  other  religions,  for  no  other  religion  offers  what  it  brings. 
It  is  the  best  that  the  world  contains.  Because  of  its  doctrine 
and  experience  of  the  perfect  God,  it  is  the  best  that  the  world 
can  attain.  Its  contents  can  be  unfolded  and  better  known,  but 
they  cannot  be  essentially  improved  upon.  At  heart,  Christianity 
is  simply  the  revelation  of  the  perfect  God,  doing  the  work  of 
perfect  love  and  holiness  for  His  creatures,  and  transforming 
men  into  His  own  likeness,  so  that  they  will  do  the  works  of 
love  and  holiness  toward  their  fellows.  Than  this  nothing  can 
be  better.  Therefore,  Christianity  has  full  right  to  be  a  mis- 
sionary religion,  and  Christians  are  called  to  be  a  missionary 
people." — (Clarke,  "  A  Study  of  Christian  Missions,"  p.  19  ff. ; 
The  American  Journal  of  Theology,  January,  1907,  art.  by 
Henry  C.  Mabie,  "  Has  Christianity  the  Moral  Right  to  Sup- 
plant the  Ethnic  Faiths?") 

Two  questions  remain  for  us  to  consider,  one,  I  think,  largely 
speculative,  the  other  intensely  practical.  Have  the  non-Chris- 
tian religions  prepared  the  way  for  Christianity?  And  what 
should  be  the  attitude  of  Christianity  toward  the  non-Christian 
religions? 

On  the  first  of  these  questions  conflicting  judgments  are 
offered  to  us.  On  the  one  side,  men  say  that  these  religions 
have  made  ready  for  the  acceptance  of  Christianity.  "  The  fun- 
damental requisites  of  all  religious  teaching,"  says  Dr.  Martin 
of  China,  "  are  two,  viz.,  first,  a  belief  in  God,  i.e.,  in  some 
effective  method  of  divine  government;  second,  belief  in  the 
immortality  of  the  soul,  i.e.,  in  a  future  state  of  being,  whose 
condition  is  determined  by  our  conduct  in  the  present  life.  These 
cardinal  doctrines  we  find  accepted  everywhere  in  China.  There 
are,  it  is  true,  those  who  deny  them,  but  such  are  Confucianists, 
not  Buddhists;  and  I  do  not  hesitate  to  affirm  that  for  the 
general  prevalence  of  both,  China  is  mainly  indebted  to  the 
agency  of  Buddhists,"  and  he  calls  Buddhism  a  "  stock  in  which 
the  vine  of  Christ  may  be  grafted." — {Chinese  Recorder,  May, 


2QO  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

1889;  Art.  by  W.  A.  P.  Martin,  "Is  Buddhism  a  Preparation 
for  Christianity?")  Canon  Isaac  Taylor  saw  in  Islam  "not 
an  anti-Christian  faith,  but  a  half-Christian  faith,  an  imperfect 
Christianity,"  a  religion  preparatory  to  an  advanced  Christian 
faith,  an  advance  guard  for  Christian  missions  where  it  precedes 
Christianity  among  non-Christian  peoples.  Dr.  Timothy  Richard 
finds  in  the  Mahayana  School  of  Buddhism,  as  represented  espe- 
cially in  "  The  Awakening  of  Faith  "  of  Ashvagosha,  simply  an 
Asiatic  form  of  the  Gospel,  not  to  be  feared  as  a  foe,  but  to 
be  greeted  as  a  friend.  (Richard's  Translation  of  "  The  Awak- 
ening of  Faith,"  pp.  vi,  viii.)  On  the  other  hand,  Dr.  Nevius 
held  that  the  non-Christian  religions,  as  the  bitter  experiences 
of  his  life  had  convinced  him,  instead  of  being  upward  steps 
of  man  in  an  advancing  evolutionary  movement  toward  the  truth 
were  in  practical  effect  devices  by  which  men  fell  away  from 
the  truth  and  buttressed  themselves  in  error.  In  his  book  on 
"  China  and  the  Chinese  "  he  says  plainly  of  the  religions  of 
China :  "  These  forms  of  idolatry,  while  they  evidence  God's 
revelation  of  Himself  in  the  human  soul,  are,  with  the  most  con- 
summate art,  so  devised  as  to  lead  the  soul  farther  and  farther 
from  God,  and  to  turn  the  truth  of  God  into  a  lie." — (Nevius, 
"China  and  the  Chinese,"  p.  157.)  As  to  Mohammedanism,  Dr. 
Dennis  declares  that  we  cannot  "  consider  Islam  as  a  step  to- 
wards Christianity.  It  is  rather  an  attitude  of  pronounced  op- 
position to  Christianity,  and  not  to  Christianity  only,  but  to 
civilisation  and  to  all  social  and  intellectual  and  spiritual  prog- 
ress."—  (Missionary  Review  of  the  World,  August,  1899;  Art. 
"  Islam  and  Christian  Missions.")  And  Bishop  Lefroy,  while 
with  Dr.  Dennis  recognising  the  good  in  Islam,  is  constrained 
to  fear  that  "  in  the  subtlety  of  the  devil  those  very  truths  seem 
to  have  been  used  to  safeguard  a  citadel  of  fearful  error." — 
(Cambridge  Mission,  Occasional  Paper  21,  "  Mohammedanism," 

P-  I5-) 

But   these   views   are   not   as   contradictory   as    they   appear, 

and  there  are  some  reconciling  suggestions  which  may  be 
made,  upon  some  of  which  at  least  all  will  agree.  (1)  A  re- 
ligious mind  is  much  better  for  Christianity  to  work  upon  than 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  291 

an  irreligious  mind.  As  Archbishop  Benson  said  some  years  ago 
at  a  meeting  of  the  S.  P.  G. :  "A  religious  tone  of  mind, 
though  heathen,  is  a  better  field  for  Christian  effort  than  a 
non-religious  tone  of  mind.  .  .  .  It  is  not  true,  that  the  mind 
from  which  every  possible  superstition  has  been  banished,  until 
it  becomes  a  tabula  rasa,  is  in  a  better  state  of  receptivity  for 
the  truths  we  have  in  hand  than  a  mind  that  still  retains  its 
religious  tone.  ...  I  fear  that  if  we  have  one  single  genera- 
tion intervening,  which  has  no  religious  habits,  no  thought  be- 
yond the  grave,  no  tone  which  makes  it  perpetually  look  up 
to  that  which  is  beyond  it  and  above  it,  we  shall  find  it  a  harder 
task  to  convert  the  children  of  that  generation  than  to  convert 
the  polished  heathen,  however  firmly  they  hold  to  their  old 
faith."  India  and  Japan  witness  to  the  reasonableness  of  this 
fear,  and  warn  the  destructive  forces  of  civilisation  to  beware 
how  they  destroy  that  which  they  do  not  replace.  And,  indeed, 
in  every  mission  field,  as  a  simple  matter  of  fact,  the  earnest 
and  serviceable  Christian  men  are  those  who  were  earnest  and 
zealous  followers  of  the  religion  of  their  fathers.  Christianity 
will  succeed  best  where  it  has  religious  faculties  to  which  it 
can  give  new  objects,  not  where  it  must  both  give  the  objects 
and  create  the  faculties. 

(2)  But  the  non-Christian  religions  are  not  only  an  exercise 
of  the  religious  faculties,  an  expression  of  the  religious  nature 
of  man,  they  are  also  encumbrances  upon  the  religious  nature. 
That  is  true  of  the  low  superstitions  of  men  which  hold  them  in 
base  fear,  and  it  is  true  also  of  the  higher  religions,  for  reasons 
which  we  have  already  considered,  but  which  I  venture  to  set 
forth  again  in  the  clear  statement  of  Dr.  Clarke: 

As  for  the  low  religions,  fetishistic  and  animistic,  they  may 
once  have  been  upward  calls,  though  they  called  but  a  little  way 
upward ;  but  they  are  not  such  now.  They  rule  by  terror,  and 
maintain  a  tyranny  over  the  religious  powers  of  those  who  live 
under  them.  The  unseen  powers  that  are  worshipped  are  usually 
regarded  as  unfriendly,  and  dreaded  for  the  harm  that  they  can 
do.  Hence  the  perpetual  deprecations  and  propitiations.  Ages 
of  such  feeling  and  practice  have  produced  a  habitual  fearful- 
ness,  and  a  complete  inability  to  shake  off  the  incubus  of  dread. 


292  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

The  religious  instinct  is  stopped  from  going  higher,  without 
being  really  satisfied,  and  the  religion  that  holds  it  thus  in  hard 
constraint  is  rather  an  encumbrance  than  an  inspiration  and  a 
comfort. 

The  higher  religions  would  seem  able  to  do  more  for  the 
satisfaction  of  the  religious  nature.  Some  of  them  have  a  pro- 
found philosophy,  and  have  raised  certain  noble  souls  to  a  fervent 
devotion.  Some  of  them  contain  lofty  thoughts  and  worthy 
prayers,  uttered  and  recorded  long  ago  by  choice  spirits.  Yet 
in  sad  reality  the  higher  religions  rank  with  the  lower,  as  en- 
cumbrances upon  the  religious  nature  of  mankind.  How  true  this 
is,  and  how  it  comes  to  pass,  a  glance  at  some  facts  in  the  great 
historic  religions  will  suffice  to  show. 

In  Confucianism  the  religious  nature  of  man  is  almost  left 
out  of  account.  Among  the  common  people,  the  highest  satis- 
faction that  it  receives  is  provided  in  the  worshipping  of  an- 
cestors. The  field  of  religion  is  occupied  almost  wholly  by  ethics, 
and  by  ethics  moving  on  the  plane  of  human  relations.  The 
whole  Confucian  system  is  exactly  a  burden  or  encumbrance  on 
the  religious  nature,  preventing  it  from  coming  to  its  due  develop- 
ment. Religion  suffers  from  being  subordinated  to  ethics.  In 
Buddhism,  and  in  Hinduism  too,  the  religious  nature  has  a 
different  weight  to  bear.  A  pessimistic  philosophy  suppresses  it. 
The  doctrine  of  universal  and  dominant  evil,  so  great  and  deep 
as  to  make  all  existence  a  curse  to  those  who  suffer  it,  is  too 
much  for  religious  life  and  feeling  to  thrive  under,  and  religion 
dies  down  discouraged,  as  it  must  where  there  is  no  hope.  Re- 
ligion suffers  from  being  complicated  with  a  philosophy  of  de- 
spair. In  Hinduism,  as  in  the  Baal-worship  that  the  Hebrews 
knew,  the  religious  nature  is  fast  wrought  in  with  the  non-moral 
nature-powers  and  the  animal  element  in  man,  and  the  com- 
bination is  commemorated  in  lustful  and  degrading  rites.  When 
religion  comes  to  expression  on  the  side  of  feeling,  its  outlet 
is  found  in  what  is  gross  and  cruel,  and  bloodshed  and  lust 
come  to  be  elements  in  the  ceremonial.  Thus  the  religious  nature 
is  degraded,  and  religion  suffers  from  alliance  with  nature-powers 
and  animal  impulses.  In  Mohammedanism  the  religious  nature 
finds  yet  another  burden.  Here  there  is  one  God,  who  is  de- 
clared to  be  the  holy  and  merciful,  but  he  is  altogether  tran- 
scendent, and  not  accessible  to  any  real  fellowship  of  man.  His 
will  is  man's  guide,  but  only  from  above  and  afar,  to  be  obeyed 
only  in  absolute  submission,  not  in  filial  life  and  love.  So  the 
religious  nature  finds  no  warm  exercise,  and  is  set  free  only  to 
works  of  obedient  routine  or  else  of  fanatical  fervour.     Religion 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  293 

suffers  from  the  chill  of  bare  sovereignty.  Thus  in  one  of  the 
great  religions  the  religious  nature  of  man  is  imprisoned  in 
human  ethics ;  in  another,  it  is  depressed  by  a  dark  philosophy ; 
in  another,  it  is  corrupted  by  coarse  feeling;  in  another,  it  is 
deadened  by  want  of  the  warmth  of  divine  love.  In  other  words, 
in  Confucianism,  where  the  religious  movement  is  ethical,  the 
ethics  become  human  and  religion  is  lost.  In  Buddhism,  where 
it  is  philosophical,  the  philosophy  becomes  pessimistic,  and  re- 
ligion dies  out.  In  Hinduism,  where  it  is  emotional,  the  emotion 
becomes  degrading,  and  religion  is  defiled.  In  Mohammedanism, 
where  it  is  doctrinal,  the  doctrine  becomes  cold  and  lifeless, 
and  religion  is  atrophied.  Everywhere  the  great  historic  religions 
of  the  world  have  come  to  be  encumbrances  upon  the  religious 
nature  of  man.  Everywhere  it  is  the  religious  nature  that  suffers 
under  their  influence.  Nowhere  is  that  nature  permitted  to  rise 
to  its  true  proportions  and  develop  its  rightful  worth. —  (Clarke, 
"A  Study  of  Christian  Missions,"  pp.  102-105.) 

These  religions  do  contain  foregleams  of  truth,  or  as  some 
would  say,  aftergleams,  but  their  errors  and  contradictions  of 
truth  are  essential  and  integral  parts  of  them.  Take  Buddhism, 
for  example.  "  It  progressed  up  to  a  certain  point ;  it  preached 
purity  in  thought,  word,  and  deed,  though  only  for  the  accumu- 
lation of  merit ;  it  proclaimed  the  brotherhood  of  humanity  ; 
it  avowed  sympathy  with  social  liberty  and  freedom ;  it  gave 
back  much  independence  to  women ;  it  inculcated  universal 
benevolence,  extending  even  to  animals ;  and  from  its  declaration 
that  a  man's  future  depended  on  his  present  acts  and  conditions, 
it  did  good  service  for  a  time  in  preventing  stagnation,  promoting 
activity,  and  elevating  the  character  of  humanity.  But  if,  after 
making  all  these  concessions,"  says  Sir  Monier  Williams,  "  I  am 
told  that  on  my  own  showing  Buddhism  was  a  kind  of  introduc- 
tion to  Christianity,  or  that  Christianity  is  a  kind  of  development 
of  Buddhism,  I  must  ask  you  to  bide  with  me  a  little  longer,  while 
I  point  out  certain  contrasts,  which  ought  to  make  it  clear  to 
any  reasonable  man  how  vast,  how  profound,  how  impassable 
is  the  gulf  separating  the  true  religion  from  a  mere  system  of 
morality  founded  on  a  form  of  pessimistic  philosophy." — 
(Monier  Williams,  "Mystical  Buddhism,"  p.  24.)  And  then 
he  proceeds  to  point  out  those   radical  contradictions  between 


294  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

Buddhism  and  Christianity,  which  can  only  be  regarded  as  a 
preparation  for  Christianity  in  the  same  sense  in  which  error 
is  a  preparation  for  truth.  In  simple  fact,  there  are  agreements 
and  disagreements  in  fundamental  things  between  Christianity 
and  each  other  religion.  The  disagreements  overbalance  the 
agreements  and  constitute  the  essential  character  of  Christianity. 
The  question  would  seem  to  be  as  to  whether  the  truths  which 
the  non-Christian  religions  hold  will  draw  them  to  Christianity 
more  powerfully  than  their  errors  will  repel  them  from  it. 

(3)  In  theory  the  non-Christian  religions  are  expressions  of 
man's  sense  of  need  and  incompleteness,  and  viewed  as  seekings 
after  God,  ought  to  prepare  men  for  the  full  truth.  Twilight 
ought  to  prepare  for  day,  unless,  indeed,  it  be  the  other  twilight. 
Phillips  Brooks  has  put  the  noble  view  of  the  welcome  fulfil- 
ment by  Christianity  of  all  the  hopes  of  men  in  his  sermon  on 
"  Disciples  and  Apostles."  ("  Twenty  Sermons,"  Sermon  IX, 
p.  170.) 

I  think  again  that  it  is  wonderful  how  many  people  who 
understand  perfectly  what  the  Gospel  is,  in  the  work  that  it  does 
for  them,  are  all  wrong  in  their  conception  of  what  the  Gospel 
has  to  do  for  the  world,  and  so  have  false  conceptions  about 
the  whole  possibility  of  missions.  They  talk  as  if  what  the 
religion  of  Jesus  had  to  do  was  to  go  a  perfect  stranger  into 
a  dark  land,  with  whose  people  it  had  before  had  no  concern, 
to  cast  out  everything  that  they  had  ever  believed,  to  falsify  all 
their  hopes,  to  begin  their  life  all  over  again.  Perhaps  they 
thought  the  same  thing  once  about  themselves.  Perhaps  they 
stood  for  years  untouched  by  Christianity,  because  Christianity 
seemed  to  them  to  be  the  utter  destruction  of  all  that  they  had 
ever  been,  or  thought,  or  hoped.  They  could  not  understand  it. 
It  was  all  strange  and  foreign  to  them.  But  by  and  by  Christ 
really  came,  and  lo!  Fie  was  the  revealer  of  that  old  life.  He 
purified  that  old  self;  but  it  was  it  still,  purified  and  saved,  that 
He  set  up  to  be  the  burden  of  their  thanksgiving.  The  old  hopes 
were  enlightened :  the  old  ignorant  prayers  were  fulfilled.  It 
was  as  when  the  Apostles  went  out  and  cried  up  and  down 
Judea,  "  The  Messiah  has  come,"  and  Judea  understood  itself. 
It  was  as  when  Paul  stood  on  Mars  Hill  and  cried,  "  Whom 
you  ignorantly  worship,  Him  declare  I  unto  you  " ;  and  the  altar 
to  the  unknown  God  burst   for  the  first  time  into  the  bright 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  295 

blaze  of  an  intelligent  sacrifice.  And  that  is  what  the  Christian 
religion,  fulfilling  its  missionary  duty,  has  to  do  for  all  the  world. 
It  is  the  great  interpreter  of  the  religious  heart  of  man.  Its 
manifested  God  speaks,  and  the  divine  voices  throughout  all  the 
world  become  intelligible.  Its  message  is  declared,  and  countless 
oracles,  that  were  all  blind,  win  a  clear  meaning.  Its  sacrifice  is 
held  up,  and  the  heathen  altar  drops  its  veil  of  superstition  and 
discerns  its  own  long-lost  intention.  Its  Son  of  Man  goes  with 
His  gracious  footsteps  through  the  hosts  of  heathen  barbarians, 
and  their  sonship  to  God  leaps  into  consciousness  and  life. 

This  is  the  noble  view  which  we  all  want  to  believe.  But 
did  Judea  understand  itself  when  it  saw  Christ?  Did  the  altar 
on  Mars'  Hill  blaze  after  Paul  with  the  fire  of  an  intelligent 
sacrifice,  the  sacrifice  of  the  broken  heart  made  new?  Among 
the  hosts  of  the  non-Christian  peoples,  does  their  sonship  to 
God  leap  into  consciousness  and  life  and  obedience  at  the  sound 
of  the  Gospel?  Did  it  when  Dr.  Hall  preached  to  them  with 
as  conciliatory  and  winning  a  voice  as  it  is  possible  for  the 
Gospel  to  use,  and  when  Phillips  Brooks  talked  with  Keshub 
Chunder  Sen?  Is  it,  after  all,  not  a  simple  question  of  facts? 
Judaism  prepared  the  way  for  Christianity,  but  it  did  not  pre- 
pare the  Jews  for  either  Christianity  or  Christ.  He  came  unto 
His  own  and  His  own  received  Him  not.  Phillips  Brooks 
preached  to  men  the  Lord  Christ's  fulfilment  of  the  hopes  and 
longings  of  their  hearts,  and  here  and  there  a  man  answered 
and  was  made  complete  in  Christ,  but  the  great  mass  of  those 
who  heard  him  were  only  as  those  who  had  listened  to  a  pleasant 
song.  There  was  a  time  when  Dr.  Barrows  also  held  this  view. 
"'The  glory  of  Christianity!'  said  Professor  Jowett,"  wrote 
Dr.  Barrows  in  the  full  flush  of  enthusiasm  over  his  parliament, 
"  '  is  not  to  be  as  unlike  other  religions  as  possible,  but  to  be 
their  perfection  and  fulfilment.'  As  Judaism  and  Christianity 
were  reconciled  in  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  so  Buddhism 
and  Christianity,  Hinduism  and  Christianity,  Confucianism  and 
Christianity,  Islam  and  Christianity,  are  yet  to  be  reconciled 
by  some  supreme  minds,  who  will  show  to  India,  China,  Japan, 
Arabia,  that  in  Christ  all  that  is  good  and  true  in  their  faiths 
has  been  embodied  and  completed  by  a  special  revelation." — (The 


296  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

Forum,  September,  1894,  art.  by  J.  H.  Barrows,  "  Results  of 
the  Parliament  of  Religions,"  p.  62.)  Well,  those  supreme  minds 
will  have  to  do  their  proposed  work  more  effectively  than  the 
writer  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  did  his.  So  Judaism  and 
Christianity  were  reconciled  in  that  Epistle?  Where,  then,  did 
the  Judaism  we  have  known  ever  since  come  from,  the  million 
of  Jews  in  New  York  City  who  are  unreconciled  to  Christianity? 
The  Epistle  demonstrated  the  superiority  and  fulfilling  glory  of 
Christianity,  but  it  neither  made  Christians  of  the  Jews  nor  ab- 
sorbed Judaism  in  Christianity.  The  Gospel  came  to  the  Jews 
as  it  goes  now  to  the  world.  Some  men,  at  least,  have  preached 
it  without  denying  it.  It  has  found  here  and  there  the  sheep 
of  Christ,  who  have  recognised  their  Shepherd's  voice.  But, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  non-Christian  religions  have  thus  far 
proved  as  poor  schoolmasters  as  Judaism  to  bring  men  to  Christ. 
It  may  be  held  that,  with  Judaism,  this  was  their  mission,  but 
that  is  to  throw  us  back  on  the  mystery  of  God's  method  in  the 
education  of  mankind,  and  it  is  to  present  to  faith  a  proposition 
regarding  the  philosophy  of  history  as  yet  unconfirmed  by  the 
facts.  Some  day  we  shall  know  what  part  the  non-Christian 
religions  played  in  the  economy  of  God.    We  do  not  know  now. 

What,  then,  we  ask  finally,  should  be  the  attitude  of  Chris- 
tianity toward  them? 

The  New  Testament  apostles  and  the  Old  Testament  prophets 
had  to  deal  either  with  non-Christian  religions  or  with  faiths 
at  variance  with  Hebrew  monotheism.  Without  sharing  his 
criticism,  we  will  let  a  modern  writer  describe  their  attitude : 

Paul  judges  the  alien  religions  from  the  position  of  strict 
Jewish  monotheism,  and  his  estimate  of  them  is  lacking  in  breadth 
and  sympathy.  He  makes  no  allowance  for  the  elements  of  good 
that  were  mingled  with  the  error,  for  the  higher  thoughts  and 
aspirations  which  had  only  found  an  imperfect  utterance.  Com- 
paring Christianity  with  Paganism  he  saw  nothing  but  an  un- 
qualified contrast  of  light  and  darkness,  knowledge  and  ignorance, 
life  and  death.  When  we  apply  it  literally  to  any  form  of  heathen 
religion,  Paul's  criticism  is  inadequate  and  unjust;  but  none  the 
less  we  cannot  but  recognise  the  truth  at  the  heart  of  it.  The 
heathen  spirit,  which  refuses  to  know  the  invisible  things  by  the 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  297 

things  that  are  made,  is  always  the  same,  under  many  different 
manifestations.  It  was  this  spirit  which  Paul  condemned  with 
unequalled  power  and  insight,  and  his  words  have  still  their 
meaning  and  their  warning  for  our  world  to-day.   .    .    . 

It  is  an  axiom  in  Paul's  psychology  that  the  vov?,  the  inward 
mind  which  is  the  core  of  man's  being,  is  directed  to  God, 
although  its  will  is  rendered  impotent  by  the  will  of  the  flesh.  In 
the  case  of  the  Jews,  this  inward  mind  was  still  struggling  to 
assert  itself,  but  the  heathen,  puffed  up  with  the  sense  of  their 
own  wisdom,  had  allowed  it  to  grow  paralysed.  Spiritual  beings, 
they  had  denied  their  higher  affinities,  and  had  offered  their  wor- 
ship to  the  merely  natural,  putting  the  creature  in  place  of  the 
Creator.  Not  only  was  the  true  mind  thus  rendered  inoperative, 
but  "  since  they  cared  not  to  retain  God  in  their  knowledge,  He 
gave  them  over  to  a  reprobate  mind."  The  light  that  was  in 
them  changed  into  darkness ;  the  divine  principle  was  replaced 
by  an  active  principle  of  evil,  which  wholly  mastered  them. 

It  may  be  objected  to  Paul's  analysis  that  it  is  not  in  strict 
accordance  with  historical  fact.  Heathenism,  as  we  are  now 
aware,  was  not  in  its  origin  a  rebellion  against  the  sovereignty  of 
God.  It  was  not  the  corruption  of  a  higher  primitive  faith,  but 
the  first  stage  in  a  religious  development.  Even  Jewish  mono- 
theism was  preceded  by  crude  forms  of  nature-worship,  which 
only  gradually  gave  way  to  the  ethical  teaching  of  the  great 
prophets.  Paul's  real  object,  however,  is  not  to  trace  out  the 
historical  genesis  of  Pagan  religion,  but  to  determine  its  ultimate 
meaning  and  character.  It  had  set  the  creature  in  the  place  of 
the  Creator.  It  had  failed  to  perceive  that  above  the  natural 
there  is  a  spiritual  world,  in  relation  to  which  man's  life  and 
destiny  must  be  interpreted.  The  heathen  were  "  without  God 
in  the  world"  (Eph.  ii:i2);  and  through  their  blindness  to 
the  supreme  reality  their  life  was  reduced  to  a  chaos,  their 
feelings  and  thoughts  and  actions  were  hopelessly  perverted.  In 
its  substance,  Paul's  criticism  thus  holds  good,  not  merely  in 
regard  to  heathen  worship  proper,  but  in  regard  to  the  naturalism 
which  threatens  ever  and  again  to  displace  religion.  Laplace, 
asked  by  Napoleon  whether  he  allowed  no  room  for  God 
within  his  system,  is  said  to  have  declared,  "  I  do  not  find  that 
I  require  any  such  hypothesis."  Paul  would  answer  that  the 
world  becomes  simply  unintelligible  to  those  who  will  not  retain 
God  in  their  knowledge.  Professing  themselves  to  be  wise,  they 
are  made  foolish.  Their  error  may  not  be  demonstrable  by  rea- 
son, but  it  comes  to  light  in  the  practical  attempt  to  live  as  though 
there  were  no  God  above  the  natural  forces.    Such  a  life  contains 


298  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

in  it  the  principle  of  dissolution.  Leave  out  the  spiritual  and 
the  natural  will  fall  to  pieces,  being  emptied  of  its  inward  mean- 
ing and  reality. —  (Scott,  "  The  Apologetic  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment," pp.  125,  144  ff.) 

Shall  we  take  the  same  attitude  with  St.  Paul,  or  has  our 
knowledge  of  religions,  of  which  Paul  was  ignorant,  and  our 
view  of  God's  relation  to  the  world  made  that  impossible?  But 
no  one  knows  the  non-Christian  religions  better  than  the  men 
who  from  a  long  personal  association  with  them  as  adherents 
are  now  in  a  position  to  compare  them  with  Christianity,  which 
they  have  come  to  know  by  personal  experience,  men  like  Nehe- 
miah  Goreh  and  Imad-ud  din.  Shall  we  take  their  attitude? 
Dr.  Imad-ud  din  tells  us :  "I  found  nothing  in  Mohammedanism 
from  which  an  unprejudiced  man  might  in  his  heart  derive 
true  hope  and  real  comfort,  though  I  searched  for  it  earnestly 
in  the  Koran,  the  Traditions,  and  also  in  Sufism.  Rites,  cere- 
monies, and  theories  I  found  in  abundance,  but  not  the  slightest 
spiritual  benefit  does  a  man  get  by  acting  on  them.  He  remains 
fast  held  in  the  grip  of  darkness  and  death.  ...  I  discovered 
that  the  religion  of  Mohammed  is  not  of  God,  and  that  the 
Mohammedans  have  been  deceived,  and  are  lying  in  error;  and 
that  salvation  is  surely  to  be  found  in  the  Christian  religion." 
It  must  be  recognised  that  this  is  the  general  attitude  of  Chris- 
tians who  had  been  Mohammedans  or  Hindus  or  believers  in 
some  other  faith.     As  Dr.  H.  Martyn  Clark  says: 

The  unanimity  of  all  converts  from  Islam  concerning  that 
religion  is  emphatic  and  startling.  "  Earthly,  sensual,  devilish," 
is  invariably  in  effect  their  deliverance.  Not  one  of  them  has 
ever  found  it  aught  else  but  an  evil  and  debasing  thing.  They 
have  not  felt  the  genial  influences  or  vitalising  power  of  any 
of  the  truths  it  is  supposed  to  contain.  The  statement  that  it 
has  such  truths  is  in  itself  a  revelation  to  them,  and  when  they 
hear  such  have  been  discovered  to  exist,  their  answer,  to  that 
and  other  theories  now  rather  the  fashion  concerning  Islam,  is 
a  pitying  smile,  and  a  "  Well !  well !  It  was  our  faith  and  that 
of  our  fathers  before  us;  we  do  not  know  of  these  things,  nor 
have  we  so  found  it."  As  for  its  being  a  help  towards  God  and 
good,  it  has  been  their  sorest  hindrance  in  the  way  of  life.     It 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  299 

has  made  the  acceptance  of  Christian  truth  all  the  more  difficult, 
and  the  Christian  life  infinitely  harder.  One  of  the  best  native 
pastors  said :  "  After  many  years  of  Christianity  the  poison  of 
Mohammedanism  still  works  in  our  muscles  and  makes  us  weak." 
They  err  who  think  Islam  a  development,  an  advance  from  a 
lower  to  a  higher  plane.  It  is  in  reality  a  retrogression,  a  de- 
generation from  a  higher  to  a  lower  state.  I  took  one  convert 
to  task  for  his  unbridled  speech.  His  reply  was :  "  My  father, 
you  can  afford  to  speak  kindly  of  the  thing.  You  were  never 
steeped  to  the  lips  in  that  mire  as  I  have  been.  Were  it  not  for 
God's  mercy,  where  would  I  be  now?  " — (From  The  Church  Mis- 
sionary Intelligencer,  November,  1894:  "Some  Results  of  the 
Late  Mohammedan  Controversy,"  by  Dr.  H.  Martyn  Clark, 
p.  814  ff.) 

There  are  converts  who  take  a  different  attitude.  A  friend 
writes  from  India  of  a  Christian  layman,  once  a  Mohammedan, 
who  is  now  a  great  champion  of  Christianity  as  against  the 
Moslem  religious  propaganda,  and  who  says : 

I  have  been  proving  the  sublimity  of  the  Christian  religion 
and  endeavouring  to  show  that  the  Christian  counterpart  of 
everything  good  in  doctrine  and  morality  in  Islam  is  always 
superior,  and  that  Mohammedanism,  even  at  its  highest,  is  only 
the  next  best,  and  that  from  a  true  Koranic  point  of  view  the 
religion  of  the  Gospels  is  open  to  no  question  whatever.  It  is 
rather  the  goal  to  which  all  the  religions  of  the  world  aspire  to 
reach.  My  conception  of  Islam  is  more  optimistic.  I  despair 
of  the  Islam  which  obtains  among  the  so-called  Orthodox,  and 
it  is  only  these  whose  weakness  I  would  expose.  The  Islam  of 
the  Koran,  with  its  Asian  Christology,  is  a  fine  amalgam  of  In- 
diaism  and  Christianity.  It  is  the  Nazarene  form  of  Christianity, 
confounded  with  certain  social  and  religious  prejudices  of  the 
time  and  the  country,  and  can  be  very  rightly  regarded,  "  rather 
as  a  heresy  than  as  an  alien  faith,"  but  not  more  heretical  than 
so  many  ancient  and  modern  ones. 

What  then,  amid  these  divergent  views,  shall  we  say  that  the 
attitude  of  Christianity  ought  to  be? 

1.  First  of  all,  it  should  be  consistent.  Christianity  in  the 
missionary  enterprise,  in  its  special  lecturers  and  representatives, 
and  in  its  reception  of  representatives  of  the  non-Christian  re- 


3oo  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

ligions  when  they  visit  Western  lands,  should  take  a  consistent 
position.  The  relations  of  Christianity  to  the  other  religions 
are  not  variable.  If  it  is  our  right  and  duty  to  take  an  attitude 
in  foreign  missions  and  to  project  our  enterprise  on  the  con- 
viction that  Christianity  is  the  universal  religion,  and  ought  to 
be  the  personal  faith  of  every  man,  it  is  neither  just  nor  honour- 
able to  belie  that  attitude  in  any  of  our  relations. 

2.  Christianity  should  joyfully  recognise  all  the  good  that 
is  in  the  non-Christian  religions  and  build  upon  it.  This  is  the 
attitude  it  has  taken  from  the  beginning  of  the  history  of  its 
missionary  relations.  Harnack  has  eloquently  described  its 
policy : 

From  the  very  outset  Christianity  came  forward  with  a  spirit 
of  universalism,  by  dint  of  which  it  laid  hold  of  the  entire  life 
of  men  in  all  its  functions,  throughout  its  heights  and  depths, 
in  all  its  feelings,  thoughts,  and  actions.  This  guaranteed  its 
triumph.  In  and  with  its  universalism  it  also  declared  that  the 
Jesus  whom  it  preached  was  the  Logos.  To  him  it  referred  every- 
thing that  could  possibly  be  deemed  of  human  value,  and  from 
him  it  carefully  excluded  whatever  belonged  to  the  purely  natural 
sphere.  From  the  very  first  it  embraced  humanity  and  the  world, 
despite  the  small  number  of  the  elect  whom  it  contemplated. 
Hence  it  was  that  those  very  powers  of  attraction,  by  means 
of  which  it  was  enabled  at  once  to  absorb  and  to  subordinate 
the  whole  of  Hellenism,  had  a  new  light  thrown  upon  them. 
They  appeared  almost  in  the  light  of  a  necessary  feature  in  that 
age.  Sin  and  foulness  it  put  far  from  itself.  But  otherwise  it 
built  itself  up  by  the  aid  of  any  element  whatsoever  that  was  still 
capable  of  vitality.  Such  elements  it  crushed  as  rivals  and  con- 
served as  materials  of  its  own  life.  It  could  do  so  for  one  reason 
— a  reason  which  no  one  voiced,  and  of  which  no  one  was  con- 
scious, yet  which  every  truly  pious  member  of  the  Church  ex- 
pressed in  his  own  life.  The  reason  was  that  Christianity,  viewed 
in  its  essence,  was  something  simple,  something  which  could 
blend  with  coefficients  of  the  most  diverse  nature,  something 
which,  in  fact,  sought  out  all  such  coefficients.  For  Christianity, 
in  its  simplest  terms,  meant  God  as  the  Father,  the  Judge,  and 
the  Redeemer  of  men,  revealed  in  and  through  Jesus  Christ. 

And  was  not  victory  the  due  to  this  religion?  Alongside  of 
other  religions  it  could  not  hold  its  own  for  any  length  of  time; 
still  less  could  it  succumb.    Yes,  victory  was  inevitable.    It  had 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  301 

to  conquer.  All  the  motives  which  operated  in  its  extension  are 
as  nothing  when  taken  one  by  one,  in  face  of  the  propaganda 
which  it  exercised  by  means  of  its  own  development  from  Paul 
to  Origen,  a  development  which  maintained  withal  a  strictly 
exclusive  attitude  toward  polytheism  and  idolatry  of  every 
kind.   .    .    . 

It  has  been  our  endeavour  to  decipher  the  reasons  for  this 
astonishing  expansion.  These  reasons,  on  the  one  hand,  were 
native  to  the  very  essence  of  the  religion  (as  monotheism  and 
as  evangel).  On  the  other  hand,  they  lay  in  its  versatility  and 
amazing  power  of  adaptation.  But  it  baffles  us  to  determine  the 
relative  amount  of  impetus  exerted  by  each  of  the  forces  which 
characterised  Christianity ;  to  ascertain,  e.g.,  how  much  was  due 
to  its  spiritual  monotheism,  to  its  preaching  of  Jesus  Christ,  to 
its  hope  of  immortality,  to  its  active  charity  and  system  of  social 
aid,  to  its  discipline  and  organisation,  to  its  syncretistic  capacity 
and  contour,  or  to  the  skill  which  it  developed  in  the  third  cen- 
tury for  surpassing  the  fascinations  of  any  superstition  what- 
soever. Christianity  was  a  religion  which  proclaimed  the  living 
God,  for  whom  man  was  made.  It  also  brought  men  life  and 
knowledge,  unity  and  multiplicity,  the  known  and  the  unknown. 
Born  of  the  spirit,  it  soon  learnt  to  consecrate  the  earthly.  To 
the  simple  it  was  simple;  to  the  sublime,  sublime.  It  was  a 
universal  religion,  in  the  sense  that  it  enjoined  precepts  binding 
upon  all  men,  and  also  in  the  sense  that  it  brought  men  what 
each  individual  specially  craved.  Christianity  became  a  Church, 
a  Church  for  the  world,  and  thereby  it  secured  the  use  of  all 
possible  means  of  authority,  besides  the  sword  itself.  It  con- 
tinued to  be  exclusive,  and  yet  it  drew  to  itself  any  outside  ele- 
ment that  was  of  any  value.  By  this  sign  it  conquered ;  for  on 
all  human  things,  on  what  was  eternal,  and  on  what  was  transient 
alike,  Christianity  had  set  the  cross. — (Harnack,  "The  Expan- 
sion of  Christianity  in  the  First  Three  Centuries,"  Vol.  I,  pp. 
145  f,  467  f.) 

This,  minus  the  compromises,  is  what  Christianity  is  doing 
still.  It  must  build  on  something;  it  cannot  build  on  nothing. 
It  builds  as  ever  on  all  that  it  finds  that  is  capable  of  redemp- 
tion, of  being  wrought  into  the  eternal  and  universal  kingdom. 
"  It  is  in  the  power  of  the  Gospel  to  enter  sympathetically  the 
past  of  Japan  and  China,  and  the  wonderful  reach  and  wide- 
ness  of  Hindu  history,  and  put  upon  the  whole  expanse  the 
light  of  its  own  divine  interpretation.    It  can,  in  a  way,  identify 


302  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

itself  with  the  great  traditions  of  all  these  people,  make  them 
live  their  long  histories  over  again,  and  read  their  deeper  mean- 
ings into  itself.  It  can,  without  in  the  least  endangering  its 
unique  character,  appear  in  the  light  of  those  empires,  and 
come  in  the  colours  which  are  dear  to  them;  it  can  put  on  as 
dress  many  of  the  intellectual  habits  that  are  inseparable  from 
their  constitution.  Until  the  Jew  saw  his  Judaism  transfigured 
in  Christianity,  he  could  not  abandon  the  old  faith  for  the  new ; 
until  the  Greek  beheld  the  vision  of  Plato  under  grander  forms 
in  the  mission  of  Christ,  he  could  not  forsake  the  Academy  for 
the  Church ;  until  the  Roman  discovered  in  the  sign  of  the  cross 
a  diviner  form  of  the  victorious  power  after  which  he  thirsted, 
he  could  not  change  his  allegiance;  and  until  China  shall  see 
Confucius  idealised  and  transcended  in  our  Master,  and  Japan 
her  beggarly  elements  glorified  in  the  Christian  inheritance,  and 
India  her  sublime  names  taken  out  of  the  region  of  imagina- 
tion and  in  our  Lord  made  the  equivalent  of  the  moral  order  of 
the  universe,  we  cannot  expect  them  to  become  His  disciples." — 
(G.  A.  Gordon,  "The  Gospel  of  Humanity,"  p.  14.)  This  is 
precisely  the  attitude  of  the  missionary  movement.  It  welcomes 
and  uses  and  completes  all  that  it  can.  It  borrows  all  the  familiar 
vocabulary  that  can  be  made  tributary  to  the  larger  truth. 
(Kelly,  "Another  China,"  p.  49.)  It  roots  its  conceptions  in 
whatever  is  found  akin  to  them.  It  makes  any  such  kindred 
ideas  the  grounds  of  appeal  to  the  home  Church.  A  missionary 
calls  for  larger  work  among  the  Ali  Illahees  in  Persia  because 
"  (a)  They  believe  in  incarnations  of  the  Deity,  (b)  Many  of 
them  venerate  David  as  their  greatest  prophet.  Hence  they 
are  willing  to  listen  to  the  voice  of  David's  Son,  Jesus,  (c)  Curi- 
ous customs  exist  among  them  which  might  almost  be  considered 
as  borrowed  from  a  crude  form  of  Christianity."  It  is  on  what 
is  common  ground  alone  that  men  can  meet.  It  is  the  power 
already  working  in  men  that  is  to  be  consecrated  and  enlarged 
and  turned  to  the  will  of  God.  (Dennis,  "  Islam  and  Chris- 
tianity," p.  19.)  The  words  of  Principal  Grant's  introduction  to 
his  little  book  on  "  The  Religions  of  the  World  "  describe  truly 
the  attitude  of  missions: 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  303 

The  writer  of  this  little  volume  believes  that  Jesus  is  "  the 
way,  the  truth,  and  the  life,"  and  that  His  religion  is  the  absolute 
religion.  Therefore,  he  believes  it  to  be  right  and  wise  to  call 
attention  to  the  excellent  features  of  other  religions  rather  than 
to  their  defects ;  to  the  good  rather  than  to  the  bad  fruit  which 
they  have  borne ;  in  a  word,  to  treat  them  as  a  rich  man  should 
treat  his  poorer  brothers,  drawing  near  to  and  touching  them, 
getting  on  common  ground,  and  then  sharing  with  them  his  rich 
inheritance.  He  does  not  pretend  that  an  adequate  account  will 
be  found  here  of  all  the  phases  of  any  one  of  the  great  religions ; 
but  a  sketch  is  attempted,  in  the  spirit  that  should  animate  an 
intelligent  Confucianist,  Hindoo,  Buddhist,  or  Mohammedan,  to 
whom  the  task  of  describing  Christianity  briefly  was  assigned. 

It  is  these  words  which  Mr.  Slater  quotes  when  he  sets 
forth  the  actual  attitude  of  the  men  and  women  who  are  doing 
the  work  of  foreign  missions  in  the  midst  of  the  non-Christian 
faiths : 

He  who  reverently  and  sympathetically  studies  the  way  in 
which  various  races  have  worshipped  God,  while  loathing  the 
degrading  rite  still  loving  the  misguided  devotee,  will  increase 
his  power  to  lead  on  his  fellow-men  to  greater  light;  since  the 
measure  of  a  man's  love  is  the  measure  of  his  power.  We  shall 
never  gain  the  non-Christian  world  until  we  treat  its  religions 
with  justice,  courtesy,  and  love ;  "  treat  them  as  a  rich  man  should 
treat  his  poorer  brothers,  drawing  near  to  them,  getting  on  com- 
mon ground  with  them,  and  then  sharing  with  them  his  rich 
inheritance."  For  those  religious  truths  which  have  been  vene- 
rated for  ages  as  the  felt  facts  of  man's  inner  consciousness, 
we  claim  for  the  spiritual  Christ  who  was  immanent  as  grace 
and  truth  in  human  thought  prior  to  the  Incarnation,  the  Light 
of  every  saint  and  seer  who  has  relieved  the  darkness  of  the 
pagan  world. 

Religions  illuminate  one  another;  and  though  it  is  true  that 
other  shastras  yield  the  student  of  the  New  Testament  little 
spiritual  aliment  for  his  soul,  yet  Christianity  cannot  be  fully 
appreciated  unless  viewed  in  relation  to  other  historic  faiths ; 
and  the  study  of  comparative  religion,  which  should  be  diligently 
pursued  by  all  intending  missionaries,  and  which  demonstrates, 
not  only  that  man  was  made  for  religion,  but  what  religion  he 
was  made  for,  is  one  of  the  most  promising  and  fruitful  for 
the  future  of  the  Church  and  of  the  world.  Discovering,  as  it 
does,  points  of  contact  and  elements  of  truth  in  systems  outside 


304  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

our  own ;  that  no  religion  lies  in  utter  isolation  from  the  rest, 
but  that  each,  being  the  manifestation  of  a  human  want,  has 
had  a  raison  d'etre,  a  place  to  fill,  and  a  work  to  do,  in  the 
great  evolutionary  scheme;  it  has  led  to  the  cultivation  of  a 
broader  and  more  generous  spirit  towards  these  ancient  faiths 
which  have  endured  precisely  according  to  the  amount  of  truth 
they  have  contained,  to  the  fitness  of  their  doctrine  for  the 
special  circumstances  of  race  and  culture,  and  to  the  degree 
in  which  they  have  witnessed  to  Him  Who  is  the  "  Heir  of  all 
the  ages,"  the  Fulfiller  of  "  the  unconscious  prophecies  of 
heathendom." 

In  the  light  of  a  Providential  guidance,  those  religious  so- 
cieties that  have  advanced  through  centuries  of  growth,  and 
written  the  pathetic  story  of  their  human  interests  and  en- 
deavours, their  aspirations  and  their  miseries,  in  their  temples, 
laws,  and  homes,  are  destined  for  a  diviner  purpose  than  to 
be  swept  away  as  vestiges  of  evil,  with  no  message  to  be  delivered 
to  the  modern  world.  For,  rightly  conceiving  the  depth  and 
height  and  exceeding  breadth  of  Christ's  religion,  we  behold 
it  assimilating  and  adapting  all  that  was  valuable  in  the  ancient 
civilisations ;  drawing  into  its  pure  and  onward  current  all  that 
was  best  in  the  fields  of  virtue  and  truth ;  finding  expression 
for  all  the  various  aspirations  that  are  separately  emphasised 
by  the  old  religions ;  gathering  up,  explaining,  and  consummating 
the  lessons  of  all  previous  revelations ;  while,  at  the  same  time, 
fully  and  forever  proving  the  incompleteness  or  the  falsity  of 
the  views  that  have  kept  humanity  from  God. —  (Slater,  "The 
Higher  Hinduism,"  pp.  1-3.) 

3.  But  in  the  third  place,  Christianity  should  not  slur  or 
ignore  the  points  of  difference.  These  points  of  difference  are 
radical.  It  is  from  them  that  the  missionary  movement  springs. 
If  they  are  of  no  significance,  Christianity's  whole  claim,  both 
abroad  and  at  home,  is  untenable.  But  the  comparison  of  re- 
ligions reveals  the  vital,  or  perhaps  we  should  say  the  deadly 
reality  of  the  distinctions  between  Christianity  and  other  faiths. 
Recall  Hinduism,  for  example,  as  the  religion  whose  opposition 
to  Christianity  to-day  rests  on  the  claim  that  it  includes  all  the 
truth  of  Christianity.  Is  it  so?  Christianity  asserts  the  exist- 
ence of  a  personal  God.  Hinduism,  except  as  influenced  by  Chris- 
tianity, denies  it.  Christianity  asserts  the  separateness  of  man 
and  all  creatures  from  the  Creator.     Hinduism,  except  as  influ- 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  305 

enced  by  Christianity,  affirms  that  they  are  identical  with  God. 
Christianity  asserts  the  freedom  of  the  will.  Hinduism,  except 
as  influenced  by  Christianity,  denies  it,  and  affirms  an  unbending 
necessity.  Christianity  assumes  the  trustworthiness  of  our 
own  consciousness.  Hinduism,  except  as  influenced  by  Chris- 
tianity, denies  it;  all  is  maya,  illusion.  (Kellogg,  "Hinduism," 
p.  12.)  Christianity  has  far  more  that  is  unique  than  appears 
until  we  have  compared  it  with  other  religions.  It  is  the  actual 
comparison  which  brings  out  the  enormous  differences.  This  is 
illustrated  in  that  interesting  book,  "  Five  Years  in  a  Persian 
Town." 

It  will  perhaps  be  felt  by  some  [says  Mr.  Malcolm  in  the 
preface]  that  more  ought  to  be  made  of  the  points  in  common 
between  Islam  and  Christianity.  The  fact  is  that  when  the 
people  come  to  the  missionary  they  do  not  want  to  find  agree- 
ment but  disagreement,  and  consequently  the  missionary  gets 
to  think  not  so  much  of  what  they  know  as  of  what  they  do 
not  know.  So  a  missionary  writer  is,  perhaps,  inclined  to  pass 
over  common  points,  whatever  religion  he  is  writing  about.  In 
the  case  of  Islam  there  are  really  not  many  to  note,  and  in 
support  of  this  statement  I  may  relate  a  story  told  by  an  officer 
of  Indian  troops.  One  day  a  Mohammedan,  in  the  course  of 
a  conversation,  said  to  him :  "  Of  course,  Sahib,  your  religion 
and  ours  are  very  near  together.  Your  Christ  is  one  of  our 
prophets."  My  friend  replied:  "  What  do  you  mean?  Of  course 
Christ  is  one  of  your  prophets,  but  to  us  he  is  more  than  a 
prophet;  He  is  the  Son  of  God  and  the  pattern  of  our  lives. 
Besides  there  is  hardly  a  single  practical  point  where  Moham- 
medans and  Christians  are  not  entirely  at  issue."  The  man 
looked  up  and  said:  "  Sahib,  you  have  read  the  Koran,  and  you 
have  read  your  Bible.  I  always  make  that  remark  to  Christians : 
I  made  it  to  a  padre  the  other  day ;  and  they  most  always  say, 
'  Very  true ;  Mohammedanism  has  a  great  deal  in  common  with 
Christianity.'  Well,  Sahib,  when  they  say  that,  I  know  that 
they  have  not  read  the  Koran  and  they  have  not  read  their 
Bibles." 

Even  when  there  appear  to  be  resemblances  between  Chris- 
tianity and  other  religions,  they  are  underlain  by  deeper  differ- 
ences. In  the  matter  of  the  idea  of  incarnation,  for  example, 
the  resemblance  is  merely  verbal.    The  incarnations  of  Hinduism 


3o6  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

were  not  incarnations  of  a  personal  and  self-conscious  being. 
They  were  "  means  by  which  a  being  impersonal  and  incapable 
by  itself  of  attaining  to  conscious  existence  is  enabled  through 
contact  with  matter  to  attain  to  personality." — (Bickersteth, 
"  Indian  Mohammedans,"  p.  5  ff.)  Now,  the  truth  is  not  served 
by  the  denial  or  suppression  of  the  truth,  and  many  have  risen 
from  the  actual  comparison  of  the  world's  religions  with  the 
judgment  with  which  the  just-minded  Edward  Lawrence  re- 
turned from  a  careful  study  of  the  peoples  and  beliefs  of  Asia: 

With  every  disposition  to  recognise  whatever  of  truth  and 
good  may  be  found  in  the  great  Oriental  religions,  I  have  been 
more  and  more  led  to  the  conviction  that  it  will  rather  harm 
than  help  our  cause  to  minimise  the  differences  between  Chris- 
tianity and  any  other  religion.  If  we  make  the  differences  slight, 
and  say  to  men,  "  You  have  but  to  come  a  little  further,  get  a 
little  more,  and  you  will  be  Christians,"  one  of  two  things  will 
surely  follow.  Either — and  this  will  be  at  present  most  fre- 
quently the  case  in  India  and  China — the  one  appealed  to  will 
respond,  "  If  the  difference  is  slight,  since  the  change  to  me 
will  be  so  great  in  leaving  my  ancestral  faith  and  encountering 
certain  persecution,  I  will  take  the  chances  and  stay  where  I 
am."  Or — and  this  would  more  frequently  happen  in  Japan — 
he  will  say,  "  I  come,"  and  bring  all  his  heathenism  with  him, 
presuming  that  it  will  be  quite  consistent  with  Christianity.  The 
Japanese  are  sensitive  to-day  about  being  called  heathens,  which 
is  a  most  hopeful  sign.  But  it  will  not  make  them  any  less 
heathen  to  call  them  Christians  until  they  become  so  through 
allegiance  to  Jesus  Christ.  In  Asia,  as  in  Europe  and  America, 
Christianity  is  strong,  and  is  to  remain  so,  through  the  imperious- 
ness  of  its  claims,  and  through  the  absolute  assent  and  exclusive 
loyalty  which  it  demands.  Be  the  effect  of  other  religions  what 
it  may,  whether  Judaism  or  Mohammedanism  or  Hinduism, 
whether  preparatory  or  obstructive  or  both  at  once,  Christianity 
treats  every  one  of  them  as  a  usurper  on  the  throne  and  a  mis- 
leader  of  the  human  heart  from  its  true  allegiance. — (Lawrence, 
"Modern  Missions  in  the  East,"  p.  157.) 

4.  Christianity  should  make  no  compromises,  but  anticipate 
its  own  victorious  triumph.  This  is  the  view  of  the  political 
statesman  who  is  also  the  Christian  man.  "  If  there  is  any 
significance  in  Christian  missions,"  said  the  Honourable  John 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  307 

W.  Foster  on  his  return  in  1884  from  a  trip  around  the  world, 
"  they  mean  that  the  world  must  be  conquered  for  Christ.  The 
spirit  of  Christianity,  while  it  inculcates  charity  towards  our 
erring  brothers,  tolerates  no  other  religion.  Its  Founder  de- 
clared that  '  no  man  cometh  unto  the  Father  but  by  me.'  Peter 
in  laying  the  very  first  stone  of  the  Christian  edifice,  filled  with 
the  Holy  Ghost,  boldly  announced  to  the  rulers  of  the  people 
that  '  there  is  none  other  name  under  heaven  given  among  men 
whereby  we  must  be  saved.'  A.nd  the  first  and  greatest  mis- 
sionary, the  author  of  the  most  beautiful  panegyric  of  charity 
ever  written,  exclaims,  '  What  concord  hath  Christ  with  Be- 
lial ?  .  .  .  what  agreement  hath  the  temple  of  God  with  idols  ? ' 
Neither  in  Japan  nor  in  any  other  land  can  Christianity  be 
compromised  with  Buddhism  or  any  other  Christless  religion." 
And  this  is  the  view  also  of  the  modern  liberal  theologian,  who 
is  true  to  Christ  and  the  Christian  God : 

Our  second  question  is,  What  does  Christianity  as  a  mis- 
sionary religion  propose,  with  regard  to  the  religions  that  exist 
in  the  world?  The  answer  to  this  question  is,  that  Christianity 
proposes  to  win  men  away  from  the  other  religions  by  bringing 
them  something  better,  and  to  take  the  place  of  the  other  religions 
in  the  world. 

The  attitude  of  the  religion  that  bears  the  name  of  Jesus 
Christ  is  not  one  of  compromise,  but  one  of  conflict  and  of  con- 
quest. It  proposes  to  displace  the  other  religions.  The  claim 
of  Jeremiah  is  the  claim  of  Christianity, — "  The  gods  that  have 
not  made  the  heavens  and  the  earth,  they  shall  perish  from  the 
earth  and  from  under  the  heavens."  The  survival  of  the  Creator, 
joyfully  foreseen,  is  the  ground  of  its  confidence  and  its  en- 
deavour. Christianity  thus  undertakes  a  long  and  laborious  cam- 
paign, in  which  it  must  experience  various  fortunes  and  learn 
patience  from  trials  and  delays ;  but  the  true  state  of  the  case 
must  not  be  forgotten,  namely,  that  Christianity  sets  out  for 
victory.  The  intention  to  conquer  is  characteristic  of  the  Gospel. 
This  was  the  aim  of  its  youth  when  it  went  forth  among  the 
religions  that  then  surrounded  it,  and  with  this  aim  it  must  enter 
any  field  in  which  old  religions  are  encumbering  the  religious 
nature  of  man.  It  cannot  conquer  except  in  love,  but  in  love 
it  intends  to  conquer.  It  means  to  fill  the  world. — (Clarke,  "  A 
Study  of  Christian  Missions,"  p.  107  ff.) 


3o8  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

And  this  is  the  view  of  the  scholars  who  know  both  Christ 
and  the  religions  which  do  not  know  Him.  Edward  Lawrence 
quoted  one  of  the  greatest  of  these,  the  one  who  knew  Bud- 
dhism and  Hinduism  as  well  as  any,  in  confirmation  of  his  own 
deepened  conviction: 

The  work  of  Christianity  [wrote  Lawrence]  is  conquest,  not 
compromise,  and  the  missionary  of  the  cross  may  exercise  a 
wise  intolerance  towards  all  else  which  claims  man's  homage. 

I  cannot  do  better  than  to  quote  from  the  one  among  all 
others  perhaps  best  qualified  to  speak  on  this  subject,  one  who, 
besides  giving  nearly  a  half-century  to  Eastern  languages  and 
religions,  has  of  late  repeatedly  visited  India,  to  see  and  study 
it  with  his  own  eyes.  His  words  are  the  more  important  because, 
when  compared  with  utterances  of  the  same  author  before  he 
had  visited  India,  while  he  knew  only  the  books,  they  show  a 
marked  advance  in  positiveness  of  tone.  They  are,  in  fact,  ac- 
companied by  a  recantation  of  former  different  opinions.  They 
are  the  words  of  Sir  Monier  Williams,  Boden  Professor  of  San- 
skrit at  Oxford.  He  had  just  held  up  the  two  statements  that 
"  A  Sinless  Man  was  made  Sin  "  and  that  "  He,  a  dead  and 
buried  Man,  was  made  Life,"  as  unmatched  in  any  other  book 
of  any  other  religion.  "  These  non-Christian  Bibles,"  he  says, 
"  are  all  developments  in  the  wrong  direction.  They  all  begin 
with  some  flashes  of  light,  and  end  in  utter  darkness.  Pile  them, 
if  you  will,  on  the  left  hand  of  your  study  table,  but  place  your 
own  Holy  Bible  on  the  right  side — all  by  itself — and  with  a 
wide  gap  between.  ...  It  requires  some  courage  to  appear 
intolerant  in  these  days  of  flabby  compromise  and  milk-and-water 
concession.  But  I  contend  that  the  two  unparalleled  declarations 
quoted  by  me  from  our  Holy  Bible  make  a  gulf  between  it 
and  the  so-called  sacred  books  of  the  East  which  severs  the  one 
from  the  other  utterly,  hopelessly,  and  forever;  not  a  mere  rift 
which  may  be  easily  closed  up;  not  a  mere  rift  across  which  the 
Christian  and  non-Christian  may  shake  hands  and  interchange 
similar  ideas  in  regard  to  essential  truths,  but  a  veritable  gulf 
which  cannot  be  bridged  over  by  any  science  of  religious  thought ; 
yes,  a  bridgeless  chasm  which  no  theory  of  evolution  can  ever 
span.  Go  forth,  then,  ye  missionaries,  in  your  Master's  name ; 
go  forth  into  all  the  world,  and  after  studying  all  its  false  re- 
ligions and  philosophies,  go  forth  and  fearlessly  proclaim  to 
suffering  humanity  the  plain,  the  unchangeable,  the  eternal  facts 
of  the  Gospel — nay,  I  might  almost  say  the  stubborn,  the  un- 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  309 

yielding,  the  inexorable  facts  of  the  Gospel.  Dare  to  be  down- 
right with  all  the  uncompromising  courage  of  your  own  Bible, 
while  with  it  your  watchwords  are  love,  joy,  peace,  reconciliation. 
Be  fair,  be  charitable,  be  Christian,  but  let  there  be  no  mistake ; 
let  it  be  made  absolutely  clear  that  Christianity  cannot,  must  not, 
be  watered  down  to  suit  the  palate  of  either  Hindu,  Parsee, 
Confucianist,  Buddhist,  or  Mohammedan,  and  that  whoever 
wishes  to  pass  from  the  false  religion  to  the  true  can  never  hope 
to  do  so  by  the  rickety  planks  of  compromise,  or  by  help  of 
faltering  hands  held  out  by  half-hearted  Christians.  He  must 
leap  the  gulf  in  faith,  and  the  living  Christ  will  spread  His 
everlasting  arms  beneath  and  land  him  safely  on  the  Eternal 
Rock." — (Lawrence,  "  Modern  Missions  in  the  East,"  p.  158.) 

We  are  told  to-day  that  we  must  cease  to  use  the  military 
metaphors  with  reference  to  the  mission  of  Christianity.  It 
is  a  little  hard  for  us  to  do  this  who  cannot  forget  the  language 
of  the  New  Testament.  But  the  metaphors  are  of  no  conse- 
quence. The  essential  thing  is  the  truth  which  the  metaphors 
veil,  and  that  truth  we  believe  to  be  the  triumphant,  fulfilling 
conquest  of  Christianity  and  the  sovereignty  of  Christ's  name 
over  every  name. 

5.  Christianity  should  welcome  all  transformations  of  the 
thought  of  the  non-Christian  peoples  which  bring  that  thought 
nearer  to  Christianity.  These  transformations  constitute  one 
of  the  greatest  intellectual  and  moral  movements  of  our  time. 
The  new  Hinduism,  the  Vedanta,  the  Arya  Samaj,  the  various 
reform  movements  in  India,  the  whole  altered  ethical  standard 
of  the  higher  Hinduism,  the  deepest  stirrings  among  the  Hindu 
peoples,  are  the  direct  product  of  the  Christian  spirit  working 
on  India  most  purely  in  the  missionary  enterprise,  and  which 
is  transforming  the  ideal  of  the  people.  "  I  have  just  returned 
from  an  interesting  Indian  concert,  which  the  hostellers  have 
organised  in  our  Lecture  Hall,"  wrote  a  missionary  from  the 
Oxford  and  Cambridge  Hostel,  in  Allahabad.  "  It  is  one  of 
the  many  signs  of  change  in  India.  The  concert  was  in  aid  of 
the  Arya  Samaj  Orphanage  at  Agra,  and  several  of  the  orphans 
performed.  It  reminded  me  of  Stepney  Causeway  and  Dr. 
Barnardo's  Homes,  which  will  always  have  a  very  warm  corner 


310  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

in  my  heart  since  my  East  End  days,  when  I  often  dropped 
in  to  see  the  magnificent  work  going  on  there.  But  just  imagine 
an  orphanage  in  India !  Who  says  Christianity  is  not  touching 
India?  Two  nights  ago  a  crowd  of  hostellers  came  to  me  in 
the  greatest  excitement.  They  wanted  to  leave  to  go  down  to 
the  annual  mcla,  or  festival,  which  is  held  at  the  confluence  of 
the  Jumna  and  Ganges,  near  the  Allahabad  fort,  and  what  was 
their  purpose?  They  had  heard  that  there  were  many  wretched 
pilgrims  who  were  living  in  utter  squalor  and  poverty  there, 
and  they  wished  to  go  and  do  a  little  rescue  work,  and  house 
and  feed  them  properly.  Does  this  seem  little  to  you  ?  Believe 
me,  it  is  a  huge  change.  A  few  years  ago,  no  one  would  have 
moved  a  finger — why  should  they  ?  When  a  man  is  born  poor 
and  blind,  or  when  misfortune  overtakes  him,  he  is  only  suffer- 
ing for  the  misdeeds  of  a  former  life,  and  why  should  any  one 
else  interfere  to  prevent  God  giving  a  man  his  just  reward? 
Slowly,  however,  the  Christian  ideal  is  permeating  India — you 
see  it  everywhere.  The  point  of  view  is  changed,  the  standard 
of  conduct  is  raised;  consciously  or  unconsciously,  India  is  mak- 
ing Christ  the  ideal  of  conduct,  and  perhaps  this  is  one  of 
the  contributing  causes  to  the  present  dislike  of  the  foreigner. 
Somehow  the  materialistic,  self-seeking,  arrogant  Westerner  does 
not  suggest  the  meek  and  lowly  Jesus." — (C.  M.  S.  Review, 
March,  1909;  Art.  by  Norman  H.  Tubbs,  "  The  India  Student — 
India  in  Transition.") 

Under  the  same  transforming  influence  Shintoism  has  given 
up  its  claims  to  be  considered  a  religion  in  Japan.  Confucianism 
is  retreating  into  a  ceremonial  in  China,  Mohammedanism  is 
dissolving  the  bonds  of  the  Koran,  and  Buddhism  is  taking  over 
from  Christianity  everything  but  its  names  and  its  power.  "  A 
friend  of  mine,"  writes  a  resident  in  Japan,  "  was  talking  with 
a  certain  Buddhist  lady  about  Christianity,  when  the  woman 
said  that  she  saw  no  difference  between  the  teachings  of  the 
two  religions.  'How  is  that?'  said  my  friend.  'What  makes 
you  say  there  is  no  difference?'  'Well,'  said  the  woman,  'you 
Christians  make  much  of  what  you  call  "  The  Sermon  on  the 
Mount,"  but  we  have  something  just  like  it.     In  the  last  copy 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  311 

of  my  Buddhist  paper  I  read  it.'  When  the  paper  was  brought 
it  was  found  that  it  contained  something  just  like  the  Sermon 
on  the  Mount,  for  it  was  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  translated 
and  represented  as  Buddhist  Scripture."  We  cannot  welcome 
deception,  conscious  or  unconscious,  nor  false  representation, 
and  it  is  certainly  true  that  this  spread  of  the  truth  of  Chris- 
tianity among  the  non-Christian  peoples,  transforming  their 
thought  but  not  striking  into  the  very  central  being  and  quicken- 
ing the  soul  in  God  by  a  regeneration  in  Christ,  makes  our 
problem  in  some  of  its  aspects  much  harder.  Nevertheless,  we 
will  rejoice  in  all  spread  of  truth  among  men,  believing  that 
it  builds  to  the  kingdom  of  Christ,  and  that  half-truth,  in  spite  of 
all,  is  better  than  whole  error. 

6.  But  Christianity  must  continue,  and  all  the  more  as  this 
transformation  advances,  to  seek  to  win  individual  men  away 
from  their  religions  to  Christianity.  If  by  proselytising  is  meant 
winning  men  from  all  that  is  false  and  evil  in  the  world's  re- 
ligions and  relating  them  to  the  one  universal  religion,  which 
is  all  truth  and  good,  in  other  words,  the  effort  to  make  Hindus 
and  Mohammedans  Christians,  then  that  is  just  what  we  are  try- 
ing to  do.  We  are  proselytising.  And  we  do  not  see  what  else 
in  all  the  world  is  worth  doing.  The  business  of  every  man  is 
to  find  truth,  to  live  it,  and  to  get  it  found  and  lived  by  all 
the  world.  This  is  what  we  are  Christians  for.  And  this  change 
in  individuals  must  be  a  radical  and  living  change.  It  is  utterly 
inadequate  to  describe  the  invitation  of  foreign  missions  to  the 
non-Christian  peoples  as  an  invitation  to  "  philosophical  adjust- 
ment." It  is  an  appeal  for  regeneration.  We  do  expect  to  see 
"  the  gradual  conversion  of  heathenism  by  the  adoption  of  Chris- 
tian ideals  instead  of  heathen  ones,"  and  this  "  to  be  followed 
by  the  gradual  absorption  of  paganism  into  the  Church." — 
(Lloyd,  "  Wheat  Among  the  Tares,"  p.  36.)  And  doubtless  the 
day  would  be  hastened  if  there  were  perfect  preachers  of  the 
perfect  Gospel.  Dr.  Lloyd  thinks  so.  "  Japan  does  not  believe 
Christianity,"  he  says,  "  because  of  faulty  presentation.  The 
fault  cannot  lie  with  the  Author  of  our  Faith ;  it  must  lie  with 
ourselves.   ...   If  the  Japanese   rejects   Christianity,  it   is  in 


3i2  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

most  cases  because  he  has  never  had  it  properly  presented  to 
him."  But  is  this  all?  Does  it  go  to  the  very  centre?  Are 
the  Japanese  so  different  to-day  from  the  Jews  in  our  Lord's 
day,  and  the  Roman  world  in  St.  Paul's?  Or  can  it  be  that 
our  Lord  did  not  properly  present  the  Gospel,  and  that  St. 
Paul's  presentation  was  faulty?  No,  something  more  is  needed 
than  philosophical  adjustment  on  the  part  of  the  hearers  and  a 
less  faulty  presentation  on  the  part  of  the  preachers.  Men  must 
be  born  again.  They  must  repent.  They  must  find  life  in 
Christ.  The  old  phrases  enshrine  the  eternal  truth.  The  mis- 
sionary enterprise  is  busy  producing  new  moral  climates,  trans- 
forming and  enriching  and  fulfilling  the  ideals  of  the  nations, 
but  it  is  doing  these  primarily  and  permanently  by  making  dis- 
ciples of  Jesus  Christ,  by  finding  men  and  women  who  will 
answer  His  call  and  forsake  all  that  they  have  and  follow  Him. 

7.  Christianity  should  perceive  and  unswervingly  hold  to  the 
truth  of  its  own  absolute  uniqueness.  "  He  that  hath  not  the 
Son  of  God  hath  not  Life."  That  is  the  fundamental  law.  We 
refuse  to  be  led  aside  by  any  distinction  between  the  historic 
Christ  and  the  essential  Christ.  We  believe  in  a  loving  God, 
Who  is  the  Father  of  all  His  children  in  spite  of  their  denials, 
and  that  His  loving  will  is  that  none  should  perish  but  that 
all  should  come  unto  life,  and  in  a  grace  that  has  sought  and 
is  seeking  every  human  heart,  and  in  a  Lamb  slain  from  the 
beginning  as  a  propitiation,  not  for  our  sins  only,  but  for  the 
sins  of  the  whole  world.  All  this  we  believe,  and  our  own  duty 
in  view  of  it  is  clear.  But  into  distinctions  between  two  Christs 
we  cannot  go.  It  leads  us  into  regions  where  there  is  no  foot- 
hold. The  Christ  whom  we  know,  and  Who  has  been  life  to 
us,  is  the  Christ  of  history.  "  He  that  hath  the  Son  hath  life, 
and  He  that  hath  not  the  Son  of  God  hath  not  life."  This  one 
law,  which  is  law  because  it  is  fact,  is  what  "  distinguishes 
Christianity  from  all  other  religions.  It  places  the  religion  of 
Christ,"  said  Professor  Drummond  in  "  Natural  Law  in  the 
Spiritual  World,"  (p.  83  f )  "  upon  a  footing  altogether  unique. 
There  is  no  analogy  between  the  Christian  religion  and,  say  Bud- 
dhism, or  the  Mohammedan  religion.     There  is  no  true  sense 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  313 

in  which  a  man  can  say,  He  that  hath  Buddha  hath  life.  Buddha 
has  nothing  to  do  with  life.  He  may  have  something  to  do  with 
morality.  He  may  stimulate,  impress,  teach,  guide,  but  there 
is  no  distinct  new  thing  added  to  the  souls  of  those  who  profess 
Buddhism.  These  religions  may  be  developments  of  the  natural 
and  moral  man.  But  Christianity  professes  to  be  more.  It  is 
the  mental  or  moral  man  plus  something  else  or  some  One  else." 
Christianity  is  showing  no  kindness  to  the  world  if  it  forgets 
its  own  character,  the  mission  of  life  with  which  it  is  charged. 
A  toleration  which  betrayed  the  very  life  of  humanity  would 
be  intolerable  treason.  Christianity  must  realise  and  hold  im- 
movably its  unique  character.  As  Mr.  Griffith  Jones  says :  "  The 
offer  of  Christ  to  sinful  men  wherever  they  can  be  found  is  not 
the  offer  of  an  alternative  religion  to  them  in  the  sense  in  which 
Hinduism  and  Taoism  and  Confucianism  are  religions.  It  is 
the  offer  to  men  of  the  secret  of  life,  of  something  that  will 
enable  them  to  realise  their  true  selves,  and  become  men  in  the 
true  and  full  sense  of  the  word.  We  do  our  Master  little  honour 
when  we  place  Him  among  a  group  of  teachers  competing  for 
the  acceptance  of  men.  He  is  not  one  of  the  many  founders 
of  religions.  He  is  the  Source  and  Fountain  of  all,  in  so  far 
as  they  have  caught  a  prophetic  glimpse  of  His  truth,  and  an- 
ticipated something  of  His  spirit,  and  given  a  scattered  hint  here 
and  there  of  His  secret.  He  is  the  truth,  the  type,  the  saving 
grace  of  which  they  faintly  and  vaguely  dreamed ;  the  desire 
of  all  nations,  the  crown  and  essence  of  humanity ;  the  Saviour 
of  the  world,  Who  by  the  loftiness  of  His  teaching,  the  beauty 
of  His  character,  the  sufficiency  of  His  atoning  sacrifice,  is  able 
to  save  to  the  uttermost  all  who  will  come  to  Him  and  trust 
in  Him."  The  men  who  in  the  non-Christian  religions  sought 
in  vain  for  life,  and  then  found  it  in  Christ,  warn  us  to  be 
true  to  the  trust  which  we  hold  for  humanity.  "  I  became  Chris- 
tian and  openly  professed  my  faith  in  Christ  54  years  ago  for 
this  precious  truth,"  of  life  by  the  unique  atonement  of  Christ, 
writes  one  of  the  most  venerable  and  respected  Christian  men 
of  India,  the  Rev.  Dr.  K.  C.  Chatterjee  of  Hoshyarpur,  "  and  it 
has  been  the  solace  of  my  life  ever  since.    It  is  the  differentiat- 


3H  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

ing  line  between  Christianity  and  all  non-Christian  systems,  and 
we  must  not  keep  it  in  the  background,  and,  much  less,  give  it 
up.  All  the  educated  and  thinking  men  of  this  country  are 
willing  to  give,  and  often  do  actually  give  the  highest  place  to 
Christ  as  a  religious  teacher.  Only  last  week  the  Principal  of 
the  Arya  College  at  Lahore,  in  a  public  lecture  delivered  in  this 
place,  exhorted  his  hearers,  numbering  above  4,000,  '  to  follow 
Jesus  Christ,  the  greatest  religious  teacher  the  world  has  pro- 
duced in  his  self-denial  and  work  of  love  for  the  poor.'  The 
removing  of  the  line  reduces  Christ  to  one  out  of  many — the 
greatest  one,  it  may  be,  but  with  it  He  is  the  only  one  Saviour 
of  the  world.  Between  Him  and  other  teachers  the  difference 
is  not  of  degree,  but  of  kind.  He  is  the  only  Saviour,  and  they 
are  teachers." 

8.  While  we  may  hope  for  something  in  the  way  of  a  richer 
understanding  and  a  fuller  interpretation  of  Christianity  from 
the  new  experience  of  Christians  of  other  races,  we  may  ex- 
aggerate the  prospect.  And  what  we  may  hope  for  is  rather 
from  the  racial  qualities  of  these  peoples  than  from  their  re- 
ligions. It  is  to  be  stated  clearly  that  we  look  for  nothing  from 
the  non-Christian  religions  to  be  added  to  the  Christianity  of 
the  New  Testament.  Every  truth  in  these  religions  is  already 
in  Christianity,  and  it  is  there  proportioned  and  balanced  as  it 
is  not  in  any  of  the  other  religions.  We  have  much  to  learn  of 
our  own  religion.  It  reaches  infinitely  beyond  our  present  com- 
prehension of  it.  The  thought  and  life  of  other  peoples  has  much 
to  teach  us  of  the  riches  of  our  own  faith;  but  not  one  single 
aspect  of  truth  can  be  named  which  these  other  religions  are 
able  to  contribute  to  the  religion  of  the  New  Testament. 

But  it  may  be  asked,  is  not  the  Oriental  consciousness  to 
enlarge  and  enrich  our  comparatively  pinched  and  practical  con- 
ceptions? But  is  there  such  a  thing  as  an  Oriental  consciousness? 
A  Western  woman  is  the  chief  preacher  of  such  a  consciousness 
in  India,  and  the  whole  conception  of  such  a  consciousness  as  a 
great  force  to  be  dealt  with  in  philosophy  and  religion  has  been 
produced  and  nourished  in  the  West.  There  is  doubtless  a  rough 
utility  in  thus  setting  the  East  off  against  the  West,  but  both  East 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  315 

and  West  are  divided  within  themselves  by  differences  of  race 
and  tradition  as  great  as  separate  them  from  one  another.  The 
Chinese  consciousness  is  nearer  to  Western  materialism  and  the 
Hindu  consciousness  to  Western  idealism  than  the  Chinese  and 
Hindu  consciousness  are  to  each  other.  The  phrase,  the  Oriental 
consciousness,  serves  a  more  or  less  useful  purpose,  but  it  does 
not  define  a  source  of  new  religious  knowledge  or  promise  a  cor- 
rection of  Christianity. 

Nevertheless  we  have  much  to  learn  from  others.  "  The  West 
has  yet  much  to  learn  in  the  school  of  Vedanta,  so  ancient  and 
so  meditative,"  says  one  Christian  writer.  (The  Rev.  N.  Mac- 
nicol,  Hibbert  Journal,  October,  1908.)  And  Mr.  Slater  says: 
"  The  West  has  to  learn  from  the  East,  and  the  East  from  the 
West.  The  questions  raised  by  the  Vedanta  will  have  to  pass 
into  Christianity  if  the  best  minds  of  India  are  to  embrace  it; 
and  the  Church  of  the  '  farther  East '  will  doubtless  contribute 
something  to  the  thought  of  Christendom  of  the  science  of  the 
soul,  and  of  the  omnipenetrativeness  and  immanence  of  Deity." — 
(Slater,  "The  Higher  Hinduism,"  p.  291.)  These  are  sober 
and  true  words.  They  speak  of  the  inadequacy  of  our  thought, 
not  of  the  inadequacy  of  Christianity.  But  Max  Miiller  goes  far 
beyond  these  more  careful  statements :  "  If  I  were  asked  under 
what  sky  the  human  mind  has  most  fully  developed  some  of  its 
choicest  gifts,  has  most  deeply  pondered  on  the  greatest  problems 
of  life,  and  has  found  solutions  of  them  which  well  deserve  the 
attention  of  those  who  have  studied  Plato  and  Kant,  I  should 
point  to  India.  If  I  were  to  ask  myself  from  what  literature 
one,  here  in  Europe,  may  draw  that  corrective,  in  order  to  make 
our  inner  life  more  perfect,  more  comprehensive,  more  universal, 
and,  in  fact,  more  truly  a  human  life,  not  for  this  life  only,  but 
for  a  transfigured  and  eternal  life,  again  I  should  point  to  India." 
But  there  are  others,  both  those  who  have  studied  Indian  religion 
and  philosophy  from  afar,  unprejudiced  by  the  realities  of  the 
popular  religion,  and  those  who  have  loved  India  so  well  that 
they  have  lived  and  died  for  her,  who  have  not  found  what  her 
speculations  could  add  to  the  truth  of  the  Gospel,  I  do  not 
say  to  the  Western  formulation  of  theology  but  to  the  essen- 


316  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

tial    truth   of   the    Gospels.      And    even    of   the    former,    some 
doubt. 

Take  the  Hindu  race  [says  Dr.  George  A.  Gordon].  They 
are  spoken  of  by  those  who  best  know  them  as  intellectually  one 
of  the  most  gifted  people  on  the  globe.  I  cannot  help  the  feeling 
that  this  is  a  very  great  exaggeration.  The  Hindus  have  no 
science,  and  do  not  even  know  what  the  word  means.  They 
have  achieved  no  fame  in  working  out  a  theory  of  government, 
and  less  in  the  institution  of  one.  Their  gift  lies  in  the  direction 
of  metaphysics,  and  this  subject  they  have  conceived,  not  as 
Plato  or  Aristotle  did,  nor  as  Kant  and  his  great  successors  have 
done.  Their  strength  has  never  been  in  orderly  and  valid  think- 
ing, even  when  turned  upon  the  great  centres  of  being.  But 
they  have  a  marvellous  faculty  and  fertility  of  spiritual  imagina- 
tion, and  their  power  of  reflecting  profound  metaphysical  truth 
through  the  luminous  haze  of  intellectual  vision  is  indeed  amaz- 
ing. Nevertheless,  one  feels  that  even  here  there  is  a  certain 
cheapness  about  the  product.  It  is  as  if  there  were  an  illimitable 
fog  bank  off  our  shores,  rolling  in  under  a  blazing  summer 
sun.  It  comes  in  transfigured  masses;  it  is  a  wonder  of  beauty, 
but,  after  all,  it  is  thin  and  cheap  and  unwholesome.  One  can 
hardly  resist  a  feeling  like  this  in  witnessing  the  exercises  of 
the  Hindu  mind.  It  is  talk  by  the  mile  and  the  league,  and, 
although  pleasant  to  hear,  it  lacks  the  note  of  reality.  It  some- 
how fails  of  representative  worth  in  respect  to  the  character  of 
the  speaker,  in  respect  to  the  experience  of  the  average  sincere 
man,  and,  above  all,  in  respect  to  the  order  and  grandeur  of  the 
universe. — (Gordon,  "The  Gospel  for  Humanity,"  p.  13.) 

Something  is  to  come  into  the  temple  of  God  from  India,  but 
only  when  her  consciousness  and  her  speculations  are  humbly 
laid  at  the  foot  of  Christ's  cross,  and  when  she  has  begun  to 
learn  by  life  in  Him. 

Thus  far  our  hopes  of  any  original  contribution  in  philosophy 
or  theology  or  religion  from  the  quickened  consciousness  of 
Asia  or  from  the  Christian  Churches  in  Asia  have  been  unful- 
filled. All  the  work  of  modern  scholars  in  Japan  and  India 
has  been  eclectic,  a  remodelling  of  old  materials.  And  the 
Christians  of  these  lands  have  simply  been  reliving  the  ever  old 
and  ever  new  problems  of  human  life  in  all  ages  and  in  all  lands. 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  317 

Those  who  have  set  out  to  give  us  new  theologies  or  new 
Christs  have  only  rephrased  the  old  truths  or  rearranged  the 
old  heresies.  Mr.  Mozumdar  gave  us  an  Oriental  Christ,  but 
he  was  merely  a  Unitarian  Christ,  less  strong,  less  rich,  less 
true,  less  commanding,  less  a  Christ  than  the  Saviour  whom 
the  Church  had  known  for  nineteen  centuries.  And  Mozum- 
dar's  public  statement,  in  which  he  retired  from  the  leadership 
of  the  Bramo  Samaj  and  withdrew  into  solitude  for  his  last 
days,  is  the  acknowledgment  of  the  failure  of  one  of  the  most 
promising  efforts  of  the  last  generation  to  correct  Christianity 
by  the  consciousness  of  India: 

Age  and  sickness  get  the  better  of  me  in  these  surroundings, 
I  cannot  work  as  I  would — contemplation  is  distracted,  concen- 
tration disturbed,  though  I  struggle  ever  so  much.  These  soli- 
tudes are  hospitable ;  these  breadths,  heights,  and  depths  are 
always  suggestive.  I  acquire  more  spirit  with  less  struggle, 
hence  I  retire. 

They  talk  and  make  me  talk  so  much  that,  having  respect 
for  them  all,  I  prefer  to  go  away. 

I  can  best  control  my  speech,  my  daily  ways,  my  dealings  with 
the  world,  when  I  am  lonely,  and  fall  back  upon  myself.  There- 
fore, I  retire. 

My  thirst  for  the  higher  life  is  growing  so  unquench- 
able that  I  need  the  time  and  the  grace  to  re-examine  and 
reform  and  purify  every  part  of  my  existence.  The  spirit 
of  God  promises  me  that  grace  if  I  am  alone.  So  let  me 
alone. 

There  is  so  much  to  learn,  to  trust,  to  realise,  to  do,  that 
I  must  night  and  day  draw  nearer  to  my  God.  The  society  of 
men  is  full  of  vanity.  So  I  retire.  I  will  go  back  when  I  can 
serve  men  better. 

The  rich  are  so  vain  or. selfish,  the  poor  are  so  insolent  or 
mean,  that,  having  respect  for  both,  I  prefer  to  go  away  from 
them. 

The  learned  think  so  highly  of  themselves,  the  ignorant  are 
so  full  of  hatred  and  uncharitableness,  that,  having  good  will 
for  both,  I  prefer  to  hide  myself  from  all. 

The  religious  are  so  exclusive,  the  sceptical  so  self-sufficient, 
that  it  is  best  to  be  away  from  both. 

Such  a  fatal  liking  I  have  for  the  company  of  every  kind 
of  men,  so  open  to  temptation  at  every  point,  so  easily  provoked, 


318  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

so  repeatedly  impatient  that  I  must  school  myself  to  retirement 
and  forgetfulness  of  all  things. 

Where  are  the  dead  ?  Have  not  they  too  retired  ?  I  wish 
my  acquaintance  with  the  dead  should  grow,  that  my  communion 
with  them  should  be  spontaneous,  perpetual,  unceasing.  I  will 
invoke  them  and  wait  for  them  in  my  hermitage. 

What  is  life?  Is  it  not  a  fleeting  shadow,  the  graveyard  of 
dead  hopes,  the  battlefield  of  ghastly  competitions,  the  play- 
ground of  delusions,  separations,  cruel  changes  and  disappoint- 
ments ?  I  have  had  enough  of  these.  And  now,  with  the  kindliest 
love  of  all,  must  prepare  and  sanctify  myself  for  the  great  Be- 
yond, where  there  is  solution  for  so  many  problems,  and  con- 
solation for  so  many  troubles. 

The  world  is  also  bright,  beautiful,  and  full  of  God ;  but  those 
who  are  in  it  do  not  see  that — I  see  it  better  from  my  retire- 
ment, so  farewell  for  a  while. 

They  have  thought  and  said  kind  things  to  me  so  unstintedly 
that  I  could  not  help  feeling  flattered,  though  I  knew  they  were 
undeserved ;  they  have  thought  and  said  cruel  and  unworthy 
things  of  me  so  persistently  that  I  could  not  help  being  dis- 
couraged. Now  I  must  go  away  to  make  certain  what  I  really 
am  in  the  sight  of  my  God.  And  furthermore,  I  must  strenuously 
strive  to  mature  myself  in  whatever  good  thing  there  is  in  me, 
and  purify  myself  with  God's  help  from  every  evil  and  the  possi- 
bility of  every  evil.  Does  not  this  require  much  time  and  dis- 
cipline ? 

Who  expects  from  such  pathetic  consciousness  of  failure  any 
improvement  upon  St.  Paul? 

What  can  the  East  add  to  Christ?  we  ask.  What  can  the 
East  show  us  that  we  do  not  know?    Can  it  give  us  anything? 

Yes,  it  has  a  great  deal  to  give  us.  But  it  is  not  Chris- 
tianity that  needs  its  help.  It  is  we.  And  it  is  only  by  Chris- 
tianity that  it  can  give  us  its  help.  And  it  is  not  in  our  thoughts 
of  Christianity  that  we  specially  need  its  help.  We  do  not 
primarily  require  a  larger  intellectual  comprehension  of  the  Gos- 
pel. Indeed,  we  cannot  get  it  by  mere  speculation,  by  com- 
parison of  opinions,  by  new  codifications  of  truth,  or  new  efforts 
to  state  the  life  and  will  of  God  and  the  nature  and  end  of  our 
souls  in  words.  We  can  only  get  it  by  more  experience,  more 
life,  by  the  actual  occupation  of  humanity  by  God.     It  is  in 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  319 

the  experience  of  Christianity  that  help  is  needed.  It  is  in  our 
living  it,  in  our  getting  the  Gospel  embodied  in  our  life.  It  is 
thus  that  the  other  races  are  to  help  us.  And  it  is  the  races 
that  are  to  help  us,  not  their  religions,  save  as  those  religions 
have  come  to  embody  in  any  measure  above  their  error  the  great 
racial  qualities  which  are  to  be  the  contribution  of  these  peoples 
to  the  Spirit  of  God  for  His  use  as  the  materials  of  the  King- 
dom of  God,  the  incarnation  of  the  Gospel  in  the  life  of  man- 
kind. The  non-Christian  peoples  are  far  better  than  the  evils 
of  their  religions.  Even  the  sanctification  of  error  and  wrong 
in  the  non-Christian  religions  has  not  extirpated  from  these 
peoples  the  likeness  of  God,  which  will  not  be  effaced,  and  that 
original  capacity  for  Him,  for  the  indwelling  of  His  life,  for 
the  execution  of  His  will  of  righteousness,  which  is  to  be  their 
contribution  to  the  universal  Church. 

It  is  from  these  races  that  the  new  goods  for  Christianity 
are  to  come.  The  line  of  thought  in  Bishop  Montgomery's  com- 
posite volume,  "  Mankind  and  the  Church,"  was  justly  chosen, — 
"  an  attempt  to  estimate  the  contribution  of  great  races  to  the 
fulness  of  the  Church  of  God."  To  the  extent  to  which  their 
religions  have  really  supported  the  strong  national  qualities  of 
these  peoples,  which  they  are  to  bring  to  the  enlargement  of 
our  interpretation  of  the  Gospel  by  the  enlargement  of  our  ex- 
perience of  God  in  Christ,  they  have  made  a  contribution,  but 
to  the  extent  that  they  have  weakened  them  they  have  increased 
the  measure  of  the  encumbrance  they  have  been  on  the  life  of  the 
world,  or  will  be  if  they  obstruct  the  triumph  of  Christianity. 
But  it  is  the  character  of  the  various  races  which  Christianity 
wants,  to  redeem  and  use  them,  rather  than  the  speculations  of 
their  religions  for  her  reconstruction.  And  we  will  cherish  the 
hope,  though  as  yet  it  is  only  a  hope,  which  Dr.  Gibson  sets  forth 
in  his  "  Mission  Problems  and  Mission  Methods  in  South 
China,"  that  through  the  qualities  which  the  races  are  to 
bring  into  the  Church,  the  Church  will  be  enabled  to  appro- 
priate more  of  that  Gospel  which  is  perfect  and  complete 
and  needing  only  to  be  understood  and  accepted  in  its  divine 
fulness. 


320  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

A  review  of  earlier  Church  history  would  show  how  the  vary- 
ing types  of  different  races  have  contributed  to  the  development 
of  Christian  theology.  The  Greek  mind  contributed  to  it  its 
speculative  liberality,  its  profound  philosophical  insight,  its  sense 
of  the  essential  dignity  of  human  nature.  The  Roman  type  of 
mental  development  contributed,  on  the  other  hand,  the  strong 
sense  of  law  out  of  which  has  arisen  the  whole  region  of  what 
is  called  forensic  theology.  It  also  imposed  on  Christian  thought 
definiteness,  and  the  sense  of  limits  which  prevented  it  from 
running  wild  in  a  too  free  speculation.  In  later  times  the  subtlety, 
thoroughness,  and  clearness  of  the  French  intellectual  type,  when 
working  at  its  best,  impressed  themselves  through  Calvin  upon 
our  Western  theology.  When  time  has  allowed  for  their  develop- 
ment, may  we  not  expect  the  working  of  similar  forces  in  the 
Churches  which  are  growing  up  on  our  great  mission  fields? 
In  India  you  have  a  mind  naturally  religious,  highly  speculative 
and  metaphysical,  and  moving  habitually  under  the  influence  of 
sudden  heats  of  religious  emotion.  In  China,  on  the  contrary, 
you  have  a  national  temperament  with  little  natural  sympathy 
with  the  more  subtle  aspects  of  religious  thought,  but  strongly 
inclined  to  what  is  ethical  and  practical,  having  a  firm  grasp  of 
reality,  and  presenting  a  singular  combination  of  solidity  and 
plasticity.  Where  our  theology  is  still  one-sided  and  incomplete, 
may  we  not  look  for  large  contributions  to  it  in  days  to  come 
from  the  independent  thought  and  life  of  Christian  men  in  our 
mission  fields ;  and  may  we  not  look  forward  to  the  attainment, 
as  one  of  the  ample  rewards  of  our  mission  work,  of  the  fuller 
and  more  rounded  theology  for  which  the  Church  has  waited 
so  long?  So  may  come  at  last  the  healing  of  those  divisions  by 
which  she  has  been  torn  and  weakened  throughout  her  chequered 
history. 

When  to  Jewish  fervour,  Greek  passion,  Roman  restraint, 
French  acuteness,  German  depth,  English  breadth,  Scottish  in- 
tensity, and  American  alertness,  are  added  Indian  religious 
subtlety,  with  Chinese  ethical  sagacity — all  baptised  into  the  One 
Spirit — then  we  may  reach  at  last  the  fuller  theology,  worthy 
of  the  world-wide  hospitalities  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  and 
setting  forth  more  nearly  the  very  thoughts  of  God. —  (Gibson, 
Op.  cit.,  pp.  282-286.) 

There  are  those,  it  must  be  said,  who  feel  grave  concern  at 
the  issues  with  which  the  modern  world  confronts  us.  It  is 
evident,  they  say,  that  the  non-Christian  races  are  to  exert  a 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  321 

more  direct  and  powerful  influence  upon  the  Christian  peoples, 
and  they  dread  the  result.  What  they  have  to  give,  they  fear 
will  be  by  no  means  wholly  good,  and  they  look  not  for  an 
enrichment,  but  for  an  impoverishment  of  our  best  life  from 
their  contribution  to  it: 

At  this  juncture  [says  Professor  Reinsch]  the  East  with  its 
swarming  hordes  living  a  listless  life  from  century  to  century ; 
the  West  with  its  energetic,  individualistic  impulses,  but  without 
any  consistent  philosophy  of  civilisation,  meet  face  to  face.  That 
this  threatens  to  accentuate  the  reactionary  forces,  to  strengthen 
autocracy  and  brute  force,  and  to  weaken  everything  that  bases 
itself  on  reason,  reflection,  and  individual  right,  is  natural  and 
evident.  While  some  presaging  spirits  cherish  the  hope  that 
Eastern  thought  will  yield  a  harmonising  principle  to  the  life 
of  the  West,  others  abandon  themselves  to  the  fear  that  we 
are  destined  to  be  driven  back  into  another  period  of  dark- 
ness in  which  intelligence  will  slumber  and  brute  force  reign 
supreme. 

The  unfavourable  influences  that  are  to  be  expected  from 
Oriental  civilisation  may  be  summarised  briefly  as  follows :  a 
pessimistic  view  of  life ;  an  undervaluing  of  individual  rights  and 
the  power  of  individual  initiative;  a  caste  spirit  that  looks  upon 
men  as  mere  incomplete  portions  of  a  larger  unity  in  which 
their  existence  is  entirely  swallowed  up;  the  degradation  of 
women,  whom  Western  ideals  have  placed  on  an  equal  intellectual 
and  moral  footing  with  men ;  a  lack  of  sympathy ;  the  pre- 
ponderance of  theocracy ;  and  absolutism.  It  is  paradoxical  that, 
with  all  its  individualism,  the  West  is,  nevertheless,  more  sym- 
pathetic than  the  East.  This  sympathy  is  largely  a  result  of  the 
Christian  religion ;  for  before  the  growth  of  Christianity,  the 
Roman  world  was  dominated  by  the  Stoic  spirit,  to  which  pity 
for  the  sufferings  of  fellow-beings  was  entirely  foreign.  Through- 
out the  Orient  man  is  singularly  apathetic  and  untouched  by 
the  woes  of  his  fellows.  It  may  be  said,  indeed,  by  apologists 
of  Eastern  thought,  that  sympathy  merely  increases  human  suf- 
fering a  thousandfold  by  making  every  individual  carry  the 
burdens  of  thousands  of  fellow-sufferers,  and  that  it  leads  to 
a  perpetuation  of  deformities  and  disease  by  protecting  from 
extirpation  the  victims  of  these  evils.  Even  so,  it  cannot  be 
doubted  that,  when  we  come  to  consider  the  feelings  and  ideals 
which  make  our  life  endurable,  the  bond  of  sympathy  with  fellow- 
beings  is  to  be  counted  among  the  first  of  these,  and  that  the 


322  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

introduction  of  Oriental  apathy  regarding  the  well-being  of 
others  would  impoverish  our  civilisation.  No  one  who  has  read 
the  most  recent  European  philosophical  and  critical  literature  can 
have  failed  to  see  how  deeply  this  question  is  agitating  the  Euro- 
pean mind. — (Reinsch,  "  World  Politics,"  p.  243.) 

It  may  be  so.  It  surely  will  be  so,  unless  the  non-Christian 
races  are  redeemed  by  the  Gospel  and  the  power  of  the  Gospel 
is  allowed  to  purge  their  souls  and  give  to  their  raw  capacities 
the  grace  which  is  to  be  their  contribution  to  the  ultimate  Chris- 
tianisation  of  humanity.  We  discern  anew  the  grounds  on  which 
the  missionary  enterprise  rests.  It  is  needed  to  enable  the  non- 
Christian  peoples  to  make  their  contribution  to  Christianity. 

And  it  is  needed  to  enable  Christianity  to  realise  itself.  So 
far  from  needing  anything  from  the  non-Christian  religions, 
Christianity  needs  only  one  thing,  that  is,  to  give  herself  to 
the  non-Christian  peoples.  There  is  wanting  in  her  nothing  that 
other  systems  can  provide.  There  is  wanting  only  the  discovery 
and  fulfilling  of  her  own  true  character,  which  is  possible  only 
as  she  gives  herself,  not  in  the  person  of  a  few  of  her  sons  and 
daughters,  but  in  all  her  being  and  utterances,  to  the  supreme  task 
of  redeeming  the  world,  nay,  of  bringing  the  world  into  the  one 
perfect  redemption  which  has  been  already  wrought. 

9.  I  have  one  concluding  word  to  add.  This  view  of  the 
non-Christian  religions,  and  of  our  attitude  to  them,  is  not  the 
Gospel.  It  is  not  this  message  with  which  we  are  to  go  out 
to  the  world.  This  is  what  we  have  to  say  to  ourselves  when 
we  examine  the  grounds  of  our  enterprise  and  state  its  warrant 
to  the  Christian  Church.  But  our  message  to  the  non-Christian 
religions  is  the  one  simple,  positive  yet  infinite  and  inexhaustible 
message  of  Christ.  It  was  after  a  venture  in  comparative  reli- 
gion at  Athens,  of  which  apparently  little  came,  that  St.  Paul 
wrote  to  the  Corinthians :  "  I  determined  to  know  nothing  among 
you  save  Jesus  Christ  and  Him  crucified."  It  is  with  true  cour- 
tesy and  with  frank  and  manly  sympathy,  and  with  a  quiet  but 
yearning  love,  that  we  go  to  meet  the  people  of  the  non-Christian 
faiths  to  win  them  to  the  Saviour.  We  must  put  ourselves  in 
their  places.    How  would  we  wish  to  be  approached  ?  How  would 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  NON-CHRISTIAN  RELIGIONS  323 

the  Gospel  most  effectively  reach  us  if  we  were  where  they  are, 
with  their  traditions  and  long  inheritances  and  sacred  memories 
and  infinitely  complicated  network  of  human  relationships,  of  in- 
tellectual ideas,  and  of  actual  responsibilities?  We  are  asking 
no  light  thing  of  men.  We  must  not  approach  them  with  de- 
nunciation of  all  that  they  regard  most  sacred,  with  ruthless 
contempt  for  the  intricate  intertwinings  of  the  buried  roots  of 
tares  and  wheat.  "  We  must  not  approach  them  as  if  they 
knew  that  they  were  themselves  deficient,  and  that  it  was  only 
pride  and  obstinacy  that  prevented  them  from  listening  to  us." — 
(Archbishop  Benson,  quoted  in  Cust,  "  Missionary  Methods," 
p.  264.)  We  do  not  approach  them  so.  We  approach  them  as 
the  Bishop  of  Winchester,  blind  and  far  advanced  in  years, 
counselled  Boniface  to  approach  the  souls  to  whom  he  was  sent 
in  Hesse,  avoiding  scrupulously  all  contemptuous  and  violent 
language,  and  trying  above  all  things  to  show  forth  a  spirit  of 
moderation  and  of  patience.  It  is  thus  we  go  to  them.  We 
love  them.  It  is  because  we  love  them  that  we  go  to  them.  And 
some  day  love  will  win  them.  It  will  go  out  after  them  and 
will  wait  for  them.  It  may  be  kept  waiting  for  long  years,  but 
it  will  wait,  and  at  last,  in  the  triumph  of  Christ  over  the  world's 
life  and  the  divine  perfecting  of  the  world's  life  in  Christ,  it 
will  see  of  its  soul's  travail  and  be  content. 


VI 

THE  RELATION  OF  MISSIONS  TO  THE 
UNITY  OF  THE  CHURCH  AND  THE 
UNITY   OF  THE   WORLD 


VI 

THE  RELATION  OF  MISSIONS  TO  THE  UNITY 
OF  THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  UNITY  OF 
THE    WORLD 

THE  objects  which  the  missionary  enterprise  seeks  include 
and  require  the  unity  of  the  Christian  Church.  Let 
us  consider  first  some  of  the  conditions  which  indicate 
that  such  Christian  unity  on  the  foreign  mission  field  is  desirable 
and  necessary. 

(i)  In  the  first  place,  the  magnitude,  the  difficulties,  and  the 
urgency  of  the  task  which  is  before  us  demand  the  most  fruitful 
and  effective  use  of  all  our  resources.  We  have  to  secure  the 
evangelisation  of  a  thousand  million  of  our  fellow-creatures; 
that  is,  to  carry  spiritual  truth,  the  most  difficult  of  all  truth 
to  carry  truly,  to  two-thirds  of  the  human  race,  and  to  seek  to 
persuade  men,  not  only  to  embrace  this  truth,  but  to  place  their 
characters  under  the  transforming  influence  of  the  Lord  of  it. 
The  task  contemplates  changing  the  opinions  of  men,  not  upon  im- 
personal questions  or  matters  of  material  self-interest,  but  upon 
religion,  of  which  men  are  ever  most  reluctant  to  think  exactly,  or 
indeed  really  to  think  at  all;  and  not  the  opinions  of  the  open- 
minded  only,  but  those  even  of  the  ignorant  and  prejudiced  with 
whom  religious  traditions  are,  if  possible,  even  more  inveterate 
than  with  the  enlightened.  And  the  work  involves  not  only  the 
change  of  men's  opinions,  but  also  the  revolution  of  their  char- 
acter, new  principles  of  action  displacing  old  and  producing 
a  new  fruitage  of  deeds.  And  further,  it  is  not  to  suffice  to  try 
to  do  this  in  individuals  only.  That  is  fundamental,  but  through 
that  and  beyond  that,  it  is  proposed  to  introduce  the  new  prin- 
ciples into  society  and  to  drive  out  as  far  as  may  be  all  that 
is  alien  to  the  Kingdom  of  God  and  that  will  not  be  naturalised 

327 


328  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

in  it.  And  this  work  is  to  be  done,  not  in  any  one  land,  nor  in 
any  one  language,  nor  in  any  one  set  of  conditions.  It  must 
be  done  in  all  of  the  non-Christian  lands,  among  all  types  of 
races,  from  the  savage  up  to  the  peoples  proud  of  civilisations 
long  antedating  ours,  and  made  less  accessible  by  their  hate  and 
contempt  for  us,  and  by  the  materialism  of  the  commercial 
civilisation  with  which  we  have  approached  them.  It  must  be 
done  in  many  scores  of  languages,  which  have  not  only  to  be 
mastered,  but  in  many  cases  to  be  expanded  in  order  to  express 
the  truth  which  is  to  be  conveyed.  It  has  to  be  done  under 
trying  physical  conditions  of  climate,  which  break  down  the 
health  of  strong  men  and  women  and  reduce  the  term  of  avail- 
able service,  and  what  is  even  more  serious,  under  conditions 
of  moral  climate  which  make  the  task  hopeless  except  with  God. 
It  has  to  be  done  under  all  conditions  of  intellectual  difficulty, 
demanding  the  truest  and  least  confused  presentation  of  the 
salvation  that  is  in  Christ.  And  furthermore,  the  work  must 
be  done  by  purely  persuasive  and  moral  agencies.  The  induce- 
ments which  trade  and  political  power  wield  are  not  available. 
Men  must  be  won  to  the  truth  by  motives  to  which  only  the 
truth  in  men  can  respond.  It  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  men 
sometimes  sneer  at  the  missionary  enterprise  as  visionary  and 
impossible.  It  does  look  so,  but  as  General  Armstrong  exclaimed 
once  at  a  Conference  at  Lake  Mohonk  in  behalf  of  the  Indians, 
when  some  one  objected  to  a  certain  righteous  course  of  action 
on  the  ground  that  it  was  impossible :  "  What  are  Christians 
in  the  world  for  but  to  achieve  the  impossible  by  the  help  of 
God  ?  "  Without  that  help  our  task  is  certainly  chimerical,  and 
that  help  will  only  be  available  to  us  on  its  own  conditions. 
We  cannot  expect  it  if  in  the  face  of  such  an  undertaking  we 
are  so  foolish  as  to  waste  our  energies  or  not  to  measure  our 
forces  over  against  our  work.  And  the  moment  we  do  make 
this  measurement  we  realise  that  the  supreme  necessity  is  for 
union  of  all  our  efforts.  The  task  is  too  great  and  too  difficult 
and  too  urgent  for  any  one  section  of  Christians  to  hope  to 
accomplish  it  alone.  As  the  late  Bishop  of  London  wrote  to 
Mr.  W.  H.  T.  Gairdner,  when  he  enquired  of  him  in  1898  as 


MISSIONS  AND  UNITY  329 

to  the  propriety  of  participation  by  Anglican  students  in  the 
work  of  the  World's  Student  Movement:  "No  one  religious 
body  can  undertake  all  the  work  that  is  to  be  done."  Where 
no  body  of  Christians  can  do  the  work  alone,  its  aloofness  from 
the  rest  with  which  it  might  do  it  is  indefensible,  unless  indeed 
the  work  is  not  important  or  urgent.  "  I  say  again  here,"  said 
the  Bishop  of  Albany  (U.  S.  A.)  in  a  notable  charge  to  his 
clergy,  speaking  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  in  the 
United  States,  "  if  we  were  large  enough  and  liberal  enough 
as  a  Church  to  assume  the  responsibility  for  preaching  the 
Gospel  to  every  creature,  there  might  be  some  excuse  for  our 
lack  of  recognition  of  those  who,  along  lines  that  differ  ma- 
terially from  our  own,  are  nobly  striving  to  carry  the  message 
of  our  Master  to  those  by  whom  it  has  not  been  heard.  But 
while  we  are  so  very  unequal  to  the  task  in  numbers  or  in 
liberality,  it  seems  to  me  impossible  to  hold  aloof  in  our  sym- 
pathy from  those  who,  with  a  profounder  missionary  zeal,  are 
striving  to  do,  according  to  their  own  convictions,  the  work 
which  we  are  so  largely  neglecting."  But  even  if  one  Christian 
body  might  hope  to  accomplish  the  work  in  many  generations, 
were  we  to  wait  for  it,  we  cannot  wait,  for  these  multitudes  are 
passing  away,  and  before  they  pass  are  entitled  to  know  of 
the  Lord  who  died  for  them  and  Who  would  be  their  Way  and 
Light,  and  no  one  denomination  of  Christians  has  a  right  to 
claim  the  whole  world  as  its  preserve,  the  generations  to  wait 
until  it  can  compass  them  all  in  its  denominational  name.  The 
need  is  too  urgent.  There  are,  moreover,  great  forces  astir 
throughout  the  world  which  will  not  wait  for  their  permanent 
die  and  stamp.  If  we  do  not  seize  them  in  this  generation  and 
claim  them  for  God,  they  will  set  and  harden  in  permanently 
atheistic  form.  The  magnitude  of  the  missionary  enterprise, 
the  difficulties,  and  the  urgency  of  the  task  forbid  all  waste  and 
inefficiency  and  demand  unity. 

(2)  In  the  second  place,  the  elementary  needs  of  the  peoples 
we  are  to  reach  call  primarily  for  what  is  fundamental  and 
essential  in  Christianity.  The  great  evils  of  the  world  are  the 
elementary  moral  evils  of  impurity,  inequality,  and  hopelessness. 


330  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

The  world  does  not  know  the  character  of  God,  and  therefore 
it  is  unclean;  the  world  does  not  know  the  love  of  God,  and 
therefore  men  are  not  brothers ;  the  world  does  not  know  the 
life  of  God,  and  therefore  men  despair  alike  of  the  present  and 
the  future.  And  these  three  things:  the  character  of  God,  and 
the  love  of  God,  and  the  life  of  God,  are  not  the  things  on  which 
we  disagree.  They  constitute  the  great  fundamental  and  ele- 
mentary things  in  Christianity,  and  it  is  for  these  and  not  for 
any  of  the  points  about  which  we  are  at  variance  that  the 
world  primarily  calls.  It  wants  Christ,  and  that  is  all.  I  know 
that  this  sounds  much  simpler  than  it  is,  but  it  is  simple  enough. 
He  will  take  care  of  the  complicated  problems  of  Asia  and 
Africa  and  South  America.  Far  wiser  men  than  we  are  have 
been  wont  in  their  furthest  wanderings  to  come  back  simply  to 
Him.  "  '  Simply  to  Thy  cross  I  cling '  is  enough  for  me,"  said 
Armstrong.  And  of  "  Rabbi  "  Duncan  it  was  said  that  he  could 
always  find  his  way  back  to  Christ  as  a  sinful  man,  knowing 
nowhere  else  to  go.  "  Thou,  O  Christ,  art  all  I  want,"  we  sing, 
and  the  declaration  is  no  weak  surrender  of  the  awful  problem 
which  the  application  of  Christ  to  human  need  involves.  It  is 
the  simple  assertion  that  in  the  mazes  of  the  labyrinth  we  are 
still  holding  fast  to  the  clue.  And  so  also  of  the  world  and 
its  multitudes.  "  Thou,  O  Christ,  art  all  they  want."  He  is 
the  world's  one  profound  need,  and  the  simplicity  of  that  need 
invites  unity. 

(3)  In  the  third  place,  the  definiteness  of  the  missionary  aim 
provides  for  unity.  That  aim,  as  has  been  repeatedly  pointed 
out,  is  the  establishment  of  strong  national  Churches  which  shall 
be  self-propagating,  self-supporting,  self-governing,  the  naturali- 
sation of  Christianity  in  the  national  life  of  the  different  non- 
Christian  peoples.  Leaders  of  many  different  Churches  and 
schools  of  opinion  unite  in  their  judgment  as  to  the  clear  and 
definite  aim  of  foreign  missions: 

"  The  aim  of  all  missions  in  India,"  says  Professor  Christlieb 
of  Bonn,  "  should  be  to  create  an  independent  Church  in  the 
future,  neither  Episcopalian,  nor  Presbyterian,  nor  Congrega- 
tional, but  the  outcome  of  the  national  spirit.     For,  now  that 


MISSIONS  AND  UNITY  33i 

people  are  coming  over  to  Christianity  in  masses,  the  question 
as  to  the  formation  of  a  Protestant  National  Indian  Church 
must  become  ever  more  and  more  a  burning  one.  "  It  behooved 
England,"  said  Archbishop  Benson,  "  to  insist  on  the  principle 
on  which  she  lived — that  in  the  whole  united  body  of  the  Catholic 
Church  there  must  be  national  Churches,  and  that  each  must 
hold  the  Gospel  with  such  forms  as  might  interpret  it  in  the 
best  light  to  itself."  Dr.  Norman  Macleod  put  the  whole  matter 
more  vigorously  still :  "  Is  the  grand  army  to  remain  broken 
up  into  separate  divisions,  each  to  recruit  to  its  own  standard, 
and  to  invite  the  Hindus  to  wear  our  respective  uniforms,  adopt 
our  respective  shibboleths,  learn  and  repeat  our  respective  war- 
cries,  and  even  make  caste  marks  of  our  wounds  and  scars, 
which  to  us  are  but  the  sad  mementos  of  old  battles?  Or,  to 
drop  all  metaphors,  shall  Christian  converts  in  India  be  grouped 
and  stereotyped  into  Episcopalian  Churches,  Presbyterian 
Churches,  Lutheran  Churches,  Methodist  Churches,  Baptist 
Churches,  or  Independent  Churches,  and  adopt  as  their  respective 
creeds  the  Confession  of  Faith,  the  Thirty-nine  Articles,  or  some 
other  formula  approved  of  by  our  forefathers,  and  the  separating 
signs  of  some  British  or  American  sect?  Whether  any  Church 
seriously  entertains  this  design  I  know  not,  though  I  suspect  it 
of  some,  and  I  feel  assured  that  it  will  be  realised  in  part  as 
conversions  increase  by  means  of  foreign  missions,  and  be  at  last 
perpetuated,  unless  it  is  now  carefully  guarded  against  by  every 
opportunity  being  watched  and  taken  advantage  of  to  propagate 
a  different  idea,  and  to  rear  up  an  independent  and  all-inclusive 
native  Indian  Church.  By  such  a  Church  I  mean  one  which 
shall  be  organised  and  governed  by  the  natives  themselves,  as 
far  as  possible  independently  of  us." 

The  Churches,  which  it  is  the  aim  of  foreign  missions  to 
found  that  we  may  co-operate  with  them  for  the  evangelisation 
of  the  world,  ought,  by  their  very  nature,  to  be  united  Churches. 
They  are  not  a  set  of  imported  denominations  or  of  Western 
Churches  orientalised.  To  the  extent  that  we  ever  realise  our 
aim,  they  will  be  indigenous  native  Churches.  For  we  are  not 
trying  to  spread  over  the  world  any  particular  view  of  Christian 


332  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

truth  or  any  particular  form  of  Christian  organisation.  I  be- 
long to  the  Presbyterian  Church,  but  I  have  not  the  slightest 
zeal  in  seeking  to  have  the  Presbyterian  Church  extended  over 
the  non-Christian  world.  I  believe  in  one  Church  of  Christ  in 
each  land,  and  that  it  is  far  more  important  that  the  Presby- 
terians of  Japan  should  be  related  to  the  Methodists  of  Japan 
than  that  either  of  these  bodies  should  possess  any  connection 
whatever  with  any  ecclesiastical  organisation  in  the  United 
States. 

It  is  sometimes  alleged  that  even  if  we  accept  this  view  at 
home,  the  native  Christians  themselves  will  not  endorse  it,  that 
they  disavow  our  ideal  and  are  conscientious  denominationalists. 
There  have  been  instances  of  this,  but  they  have  been  ex- 
ceptional. In  many  fields  the  great  mass  of  native  Christians 
do  not  know  of  these  different  denominations.  They  are  Chris- 
tians or  believers  in  Jesus,  and  while  they  may  know  the  differ- 
ence between  Protestants  and  Catholics,  they  are  entirely  capable 
of  amalgamation  in  one  common  evangelical  Christian  Church. 
Native  Christian  leaders  are  sometimes  opposed  to  such  a  move- 
ment because  they  prefer  to  be  supported  by  foreign  funds, 
and  they  realise  that  these  are  more  certain  of  continuance  in 
subsidised  denominational  native  Churches.  When  all  the  native 
Christians  unite,  it  means  self-support  and  the  wholesome  exer- 
cise of  control  by  the  body  of  native  lay  Christians.  Some  native 
agents  do  not  relish  this,  but  the  best  men  do.  They  have  seen 
the  right  ideal  and  they  are  working  for  it.  Missionaries  should 
help  them.  The  best  are  eagerly  doing  so.  The  Bishop  of 
Lucknow  spoke  plain  words  on  this  point  at  the  Bengal  Church 
Missionary  Conference  in  1882: 

Yes,  brethren,  let  us  not  deceive  ourselves  in  this  matter ;  the 
sin  and  shame  of  the  disunion  which  exists  among  native  Chris- 
tians rest  almost  entirely  with  us  European  missionaries.  It 
is  we  who  are  guilty;  we  do  not  conciliate  our  brethren,  and 
have  often  carried  ourselves  stiffly  and  as  though  we  had  a 
monopoly  of  the  grace  of  God;  and  the  nonconformist  mission- 
aries have  needlessly  perpetuated  their  sectarianism  and  imposed 
it  upon  their  converts  in  this  heathen  country,  where  often  the 


MISSIONS  AND  UNITY  333 

original  cause  of  difference  has  no  existence.  God  forgive  us 
all,  for  we  are  verily  guilty  concerning  our  brethren.  How 
should  they  know,  how  should  they  be  able  to  stand  out  for 
union  against  those  whom  they  regard  as  their  spiritual  fathers? 
No,  it  is  we  who  are  to  blame,  we  with  our  pharisaism  and  our 
bigotry  and  our  want  of  brotherly  love.  Let  us  not  attempt  to 
excuse  or  hide  our  fault,  but,  frankly  acknowledging  it  to  God 
and  one  another  and  our  native  brethren,  try  to  make  amends, 
and  before  it  becomes  too  late,  begin  to  strive  sincerely  and 
honestly  to  put  away  these  unhappy  divisions  and  build  up  the 
Church  of  Christ  in  godly  union  and  concord. 

I  do  not  know  the  conditions  that  prevailed  in  India  in  1882 
and  called  forth  these  strong  words.  I  believe  that  in  every 
mission  field  to-day  the  great  body  of  the  missionaries  and 
native  Christians  alike  cherish  the  ideals  which  have  been  set 
forth  here.  If  these  national  Churches  come,  we  do  not  say  they 
will  not  break  apart  again,  but  if  they  do,  the  shame  of  their 
division  will  rest  upon  themselves,  and  their  denominations  will 
spring  out  of  the  bitter  realities  of  their  own  sins  and  not  out 
of  alien  and  imported  traditions.  Our  own  duty  is  clear,  and 
the  clarity  and  distinctness  of  that  duty,  the  unity  of  our  gov- 
erning principle,  show  us  not  only  how  desirable  and  practica- 
ble, but  also  how  necessary  and  indispensable  unity  is. 

(4)  In  the  fourth  place,  we  are  already  agreed  in  the  evan- 
gelical Churches  of  the  West  on  the  intellectual  basis  of  common 
faith  which  is  necessary  for  such  unity  abroad.  We  believe  in 
one  God  and  Father  of  us  all,  and  in  one  Lord  Jesus  Christ, 
and  in  one  Holy  Spirit,  and  in  one  Bible,  and  in  one  faith,  and 
in  one  salvation.  It  is  true  that  to  reach  such  a  basis  of  agree- 
ment we  have  to  go  back  beyond  the  origins  of  many  of  the 
contradictions  which  separate  us.  But  men  are  now  ready  to 
do  this.  "  The  question  of  unity,"  says  Bishop  Fyson  of  the 
Church  of  England  in  Japan,  "  seems  to  me  almost,  if  not  quite, 
the  most  important  of  all  for  the  Church  at  the  present  day; 
and  I  would  go  great  lengths  to  attain  it.  The  only  hope  of 
ultimate  agreement  amongst  the  different  Christian  orders  is, 
as  it  seems  to  me,  to  get  back  to  the  most  primitive  time,  not 
to  the  third  century,  or  to  the  second,  but  to  the  New  Testa- 


334  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

ment.  That  is  the  only  common  basis  on  which  we  are  likely 
to  agree."  And  this  is  not  the  voice  of  a  single  Christian  leader 
alone.  The  Anglican  Bishops  in  India,  in  their  encyclical  letter 
in  1900,  set  forth  the  basis  which  they  deemed  sufficient  for 
fellowship  and  co-operation,  at  least,  in  good  works: 

As  Bishops  of  the  Church  we  pray  for  visible  unity,  but  we 
pray  with  no  less  earnestness  for  sympathy  and  charity.  The 
presence  of  the  many  millions  who  know  not  Christ  in  India  and 
Ceylon  exercises  in  itself  a  harmonising  influence  upon  Chris- 
tians. But  it  appears  to  us  that  the  path  of  Christian  unity  lies 
not  so  much  in  ignoring  or  disguising  differences  as  in  the  wide 
and  common  ground  of  belief  in  our  Lord's  Divinity,  in  His 
Incarnation,  in  His  passion,  and  in  His  ascension  to  glory.  Those 
who  bow  before  Him  as  the  one  Divine  Friend  and  Redeemer  of 
mankind,  who  acknowledge  that  His  sacrifice  upon  Calvary  is 
the  one  true  "  sacrifice,  oblation,  and  satisfaction  for  the  sins 
of  the  whole  world,"  will  depart  widely  from  His  spirit  if  they 
make  of  minor  historical  questions,  about  which  Christians  may 
and  do  honestly  dissent  one  from  another,  final  barriers  and 
obstacles  to  brotherly  love  and  co-operation. 

We  therefore  heartily  invite  our  fellow-Christians  of  all  de- 
nominations to  join  with  us  for  Christ's  sake  in  the  fellowship 
of  good  works,  and  in  the  cultivation  of  a  charitable  and  sympa- 
thetic spirit  throughout  the  Christian  world,  and  in  united  prayer 
for  these  sacred  ends. 

And  more  recently  still  the  whole  body  of  Protestant  mis- 
sionaries in  China  at  the  Centenary  Conference  agreed  in  de- 
claring that  they  were  already  one  in  their  common  faith  and 
witness  to  the  Gospel  of  the  grace  of  God. 

Whereas  [they  declared]  it  is  frequently  asserted  that 
Protestant  missions  present  a  divided  front  to  those  outside, 
and  create  confusion  by  a  large  variety  of  inconsistent  teaching, 
and  whereas  the  minds  both  of  Christian  and  non-Christian 
Chinese  are  in  danger  of  being  thus  misled  into  an  exaggerated 
estimate  of  our  differences,  this  Centenary  Conference,  repre- 
senting all  Protestant  missions  at  present  working  in  China, 
unanimously  and  cordially  declares : 

That  this  Conference  unanimously  holds  the  Scriptures  of 
the  Old  and  New  Testaments  as  the  supreme  standard  of  faith 


MISSIONS  AND  UNITY  335 

and  practice,  and  holds  firmly  the  primitive  apostolic  faith. 
Further,  while  acknowledging  the  Apostles'  Creed  and  the  Nicene 
Creed  as  substantially  expressing  the  fundamental  doctrines  of 
the  Christian  faith,  the  Conference  does  not  adopt  any  Creed 
as  a  basis  of  Church  unity,  and  leaves  confessional  questions  for 
further  consideration ;  yet,  in  view  of  our  knowledge  of  each 
other's  doctrinal  symbols,  history,  work,  and  character,  we  gladly 
recognise  ourselves  as  already  one  body  in  Christ,  teaching  one 
way  of  eternal  life,  and  calling  men  into  one  holy  fellowship; 
and  as  one  in  regard  to  the  great  body  of  doctrine  of  the  Chris- 
tian faith ;  one  in  our  teaching  as  to  the  love  of  God  the  Father, 
God  the  Son,  and  God  the  Holy  Ghost;  in  our  testimony  as  to 
sin  and  salvation,  and  our  homage  to  the  Divine  and  Holy  Re- 
deemer of  men;  one  in  our  call  to  the  purity  of  the  Christian 
life,  and  in  our  witness  to  the  splendours  of  the  Christian  hope. 
We  frankly  recognise  that  we  differ  as  to  methods  of  ad- 
ministration and  Church  government.  But  we  unite  in  holding 
that  these  differences  do  not  invalidate  the  assertion  of  our  real 
unity  in  our  common  witness  to  the  Gospel  of  the  grace  of  God. 

Here,  surely,  we  have  an  adequate  basis  of  intellectual  agree- 
ment. What  more  do  we  require  than  "  a  real  unity  in  our 
common  witness  to  the  Gospel  "  ?  We  differ,  perhaps,  as  to 
the  symbols  in  which  Christianity  expresses  itself,  and  as  to 
the  institutional  forms  in  which  it  is  embodied,  but  we  are  all 
agreed  as  to  the  spiritual  principles  which  are  expressed  in  these 
symbols  and  embodied  in  these  institutions,  and,  surely,  that 
agreement  in  these  spiritual  principles  is  the  fundamental  and 
essential  thing,  and  even  in  a  great  united  Church,  when  it 
comes,  there  will  be  room  made  for  some  disagreement  as  to 
our  symbols  and  our  institutional  forms.  We  are  agreed  enough, 
I  say,  in  our  common  intellectual  convictions,  regarding  the 
fundamental  elements  of  our  Christian  faith  to  make  the  union 
of  the  Church  in  the  non-Christian  world  entirely  practicable. 
We  have  one  common  Lord.  In  that  we  all  agree,  and 
no  one  doubts  the  other's  love  of  Him.  Believing  this,  surely 
no  one  can  say  less  than  the  Bishop  of  Newcastle  said  at  the 
Church  of  England  Conference  in  Nottingham  in  1897:  "When 
men  agree  in  love  for  a  common  Lord,  and  can  thank  Him  for 
admission  to  His   Kingdom  on  earth,  and  trust  Him   for  the 


336  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

time  to  come,  it  is  certain  that  this  community  of  faith  will 
find  expression  in  ways  which  scarcely  need  to  be  classified  as 
though  else  it  would  cease  to  exist.  If  they  do  not  love  '  one 
Lord,'  no  unity  of  ecclesiastical  organisation  will  ever  bring 
them  together.  If  they  do  love  '  one  Lord,'  no  differences  of 
organisation  can  really  keep  them  permanently  apart.  The  man 
who  feels  strongly  the  truth  of  his  own  convictions  is  just  the 
man  who  can  afford  to  be  tolerant  in  dealing  with  others,  and 
the  English  Churchman  who  realises  that  about  four-fifths  of 
the  results  of  foreign  missions,  outside  those  of  the  Church  of 
Rome,  are  due  to  other  Christian  bodies  than  his  own,  will 
gladly  recognise  the  fruits  of  the  Spirit  in  the  labours  of  others 
throughout  the  world,  and  without  abating  one  iota  of  what  he 
holds  and  teaches  as  true,  will  see  the  wisdom  of  the  resolution 
passed  by  the  Bishops  at  the  recent  Lambeth  Conference :  '  That 
in  the  foreign  mission  field  of  the  Church's  work,  where  signal 
spiritual  blessings  have  attended  the  labour  of  Christian  mis- 
sionaries not  connected  with  the  Anglican  communion,  a  special 
obligation  has  arisen  to  avoid,  as  far  as  possible  without  com- 
promise of  principle,  whatever  tends  to  prevent  the  due  growth 
and  manifestation  of  that  "  unity  of  the  Spirit,"  which  should 
ever  mark  the  Church  of  Christ.'  "  And  that  due  growth  and 
manifestation,  we  are  confident,  will  be  something  actual  and 
discernible. 

(5)  In  the  fifth  place,  the  Occidental  character  of  our  divi- 
sions makes  it  both  unnecessary  and  inexpedient  to  export  them 
to  the  mission  field.  Our  denominational  differences  rest  on 
historical  grounds.  This  history  has  significance  to  us.  It  has 
none  on  the  mission  field.  So  far  as  our  different  Churches 
spring  from  different  historical  incidents  in  our  Western  life, 
they  may  justify  themselves  to  us,  but  they  cannot  on  these 
grounds  justify  themselves  to  the  Chinese  and  Indians.  Our 
differences  as  to  Christian  doctrine,  moreover,  which  seem  to 
warrant  our  separation,  are  artificial  in  Asia.  It  is  not  necessary 
there  to  prevent  men  from  being  both  Calvinists  and  Arminians 
at  the  same  time,  as  most  of  them  are,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  here 
at  home  now.     Indeed,  the  Methodists  have  been  working  all 


MISSIONS  AND  UNITY  337 

these  years  with  great  success  with  a  Calvinistic  type  of  theology 
in  China.  One  of  them  complained  recently  in  a  paper  published 
by  their  press  in  Shanghai: 

What  distinctively  Methodist  literature  does  Methodism  in 
China  need  at  present?  In  answer,  I  would  say  one  thing  needed 
is  a  work  on  systematic  theology.  So  far  as  I  know,  there  is  no 
treatise  from  the  Methodist  standpoint.  What  we  have  is  tinc- 
tured with  a  diluted  Calvinism,  not  rank,  to  be  sure,  but  still 
retaining  a  mild  flavour  of  that  dead  system. 

Many  of  us  would  think  that  theology  that  combined  Cal- 
vinism and  Arminianism  was  a  very  desirable  theology,  and 
that  a  native  Church  could  not  be  better  supplied  than  with  a 
theological  teaching  that  recognised  the  truth  in  both  of  these 
systems.  Some,  however,  are  for  separating  the  two  and  re- 
producing in  Asia  the  theological  differences  of  the  West.  In  a 
later  number  of  the  little  publication  just  referred  to,  another 
missionary  writes : 

Many  times  have  I  been  pained  to  hear  our  preachers  present 
Calvinism  to  their  congregations,  and,  what  is  worse,  to  know 
that  the  books  taught  in  our  theological  seminaries  are  tinctured 
with  that  dead  system?  Let  the  Methodists  of  China  look  about 
and  at  once  select  a  man  filled  with  the  spirit  of  God  and  Method- 
ism, and  set  him  aside  for  the  work  of  preparing  clean  Methodist 
theological  works. 

But  what  is  the  use  of  seeking  to  transport  our  divergent 
systems?  Even  among  ourselves  it  is  only  a  few  theological 
specialists  who  are  able  to  keep  them  divergent.  The  great  mass 
of  common  Christians  have  already  merged  them,  indeed,  never 
had  them  separated,  and  the  specialists  even  cannot  keep  them 
apart  in  practical  work  and  life.  The  Arminian  cannot  pray 
except  as  a  Calvinist,  and  the  Calvinist  cannot  preach  the  Gospel 
except  as  an  Arminian.  The  universal  mind  will  not  be  re- 
sponsible for  the  perpetuation  of  these  divisions.  The  things 
that  have  kept  us  apart  here  do  not  root  down  to  what  is  funda- 
mental or  universal  or  eternal  or  really  transportable:  they  root 


338  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

only  into  those  things  which  are  Occidental  or  temporary,  and 
which  we  cannot  transport  and  make  genuinely  native  to  the 
non-Christian  lands  or  permanently  retain  among  ourselves. 
This  Occidental  and  transient  character  of  our  differences  in- 
vites us  to  union  abroad. 

2.  In  the  second  place,  to  what  degree  and  kind  of  unity 
do  these  considerations  of  which  I  have  been  speaking  summon 
us?  (i)  In  the  first  place,  they  call  manifestly  to  a  union  that 
shall  prevent  all  waste  and  friction ;  for  all  friction  is  disloyalty 
to  Christ,  and  all  waste  is  disloyalty  to  the  world.  All  friction 
is  disloyalty  to  Christ  because  it  argues  another  principle  su- 
perior to  His  principle  of  brotherly  love  and  unselfishness,  and 
all  waste  is  disloyalty  to  the  world  because  it  denies  to  great 
masses  of  our  fellow-men  a  Gospel  that  might  be  carried  to 
them  if  there  were  no  waste  and  duplication  and  overlapping. 
The  considerations  of  which  I  have  spoken  demand  of  us  a 
kind  of  union  that  will  prevent  all  waste  and  friction  on  the 
foreign  field.  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  there  is  great  waste 
and  friction.  There  is  some,  but  it  is  not  great.  But  any  is  too 
much.  The  contention  that  the  heathen  are  puzzled  and  con- 
fused by  our  multiplicity  of  sects,  and  that  we  are  quarrelling 
abroad,  is  groundless.  How  richly  we  have  already  attained  we 
shall  presently  see,  and  as  to  the  confusion  of  the  heathen,  we 
have  never  known  in  Christendom  such  schism  and  contention 
as  have  marked  the  non-Christian  religions,  and  they  have  never 
known  anything  like  the  unity  of  Christianity.  But  there  is 
need  and  room  for  a  practical  co-operation  of  effort  on  the  for- 
eign field,  which  will  make  the  work  more  powerful  and  fruitful. 
The  considerations  which  we  have  reviewed  show  how  necessary 
and  practicable  that  co-operation  is. 

(2)  For,  in  the  second  place,  what  these  considerations  de- 
mand is  not  merely  an  avoidance  of  collision  and  strife;  it  is 
the  presence  of  a  positive  co-operation  that  bids  us  to  say  to 
one  another  not  "  Hands  off,"  but  "  Hands  together."  They 
command  us  not  to  divide  that  we  may  march  separately,  but 
to  draw  near  that  we  may  march  together.  The  great  things 
which  are  to  be  attained  in  the  world's  evangelisation  cannot  be 


MISSIONS  AND  UNITY  339 

done  by  companies  of  Christian  men  who  agree  to  differ:  they 
can  only  be  done  by  great  companies  of  Christian  men  who 
relate  themselves  for  common  and  united  action.  Not  only  do 
these  considerations  demand  that  we  should  avoid  negatively  the 
things  that  impair  the  efficiency  of  our  efforts,  but  they  require 
also  that  we  should  provide  positively  the  things  that  will  make 
our  efforts  more  powerful  and  more  effective. 

(3)  In  the  third  place,  these  considerations  call  not  only  for 
this  external  form  of  co-operation  of  which  we  have  spoken. 
They  call  for  the  most  living  and  real  and  spiritual  unity.  And 
we  believe  this,  first  of  all,  because  this  was  the  kind  of  unity 
for  which  our  Lord  prayed.  We  hear  men  say  now  and  then 
that  what  we  need  on  the  mission  field  and  that  we  need  nothing 
more — is  fraternal  relations.  Our  Lord  did  not  pray  "  that  they 
all  may  be  one  as  John  and  James  are  one,  or  as  brothers  are 
one,"  but,  "  that  they  all  may  be  one  as  Thou  and  I  are  one." 
The  kind  of  unity  for  which  He  prayed  was  not  a  unity  of  fra- 
ternity, not  a  unity  of  relationship  of  men  externally  bound  to 
one  another.  The  ideal  that  He  held  out  was  not  the  ideal  of 
the  unity  of  human  brotherhood,  but  the  ideal  of  the  unity  of 
the  Godhead  itself;  and  because  we  believe  that  that  was  the 
kind  of  unity  for  which  our  Lord  made  His  prayer,  we  believe 
that  that  is  the  kind  of  unity  which  should  be  our  ideal  on  the 
mission  field.  And  we  believe  this  not  only  because  we  believe 
that  this  was  the  kind  of  unity  for  which  our  Lord  prayed,  but 
also  because  any  other  kind  of  relationship  among  Christians  mis- 
represents His  Gospel.  You  cannot  express  one  God  in  a  split 
Church.  The  Gospel  is  a  message  of  one  God,  of  one  Saviour, 
of  one  human  family,  and  until  we  have  got  all  this  embodied  in 
a  great  human  symbol  that  speaks  of  a  unity  as  real  and  com- 
plete as  this,  we  have  not  got  a  symbol  that  represents  correctly 
the  great  Gospel  of  the  Saviour  of  all  the  world.  And  we  be- 
lieve in  this  corporate  oneness  in  the  third  place,  because  until 
we  have  this  kind  of  unity  our  Gospel  never  can  put  forth  its 
full  power.  We  must  give  Christ  a  body  in  which  He  can  ex- 
press Himself  to  the  one  humanity  that  He  came  to  save.  We 
must  give  the  Holy  Spirit  a  channel  through  which  He  can  pour 


340  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

Himself  out  over  the  whole  world  that  He  came  to  keep  in  the 
salvation  and  the  purity  of  the  Saviour. 

And  until  we  have  a  oneness  like  this  our  Gospel  will  go  lame 
and  halt  and  never  can  have  the  fulness  of  the  divine  power  for 
the  world's  conviction  which  our  Lord  Himself  said  it  would 
have  only  when  at  last  His  people  had  arrived  at  a  unity  perfected 
into  one  as  He  and  His  Father  were  one.  "  In  common  with 
very  many  of  our  brethren,  both  clerical  and  lay,"  said  the 
Conference  on  Christian  Unity  which  met  in  Edinburgh  in 
May,  1900,  "  we  have  had  the  conviction  brought  home  to  our 
consciences  that  the  lack  of  visible  unity  amongst  Christian 
people  is  one  of  the  chief  hindrances  by  which  all  efforts 
to  advance  the  Kingdom  of  our  Lord  are  impeded."  And 
this  is  to  be  understood  in  the  deepest  sense.  "  The  faith  that 
finally  overcomes  the  world  is  a  collective  thing.  ...  It  is 
only  the  full  and  solidary  faith  of  a  living  Church  that  can  pos- 
sess the  secret  and  the  command  of  those  marvellous  results 
which  so  far  appear  but  sporadically  and  come  and  go  like  the 
wind.  .  .  .  When  the  Spirit  dwells  in  a  sanctified  "  and  unified 
Church  as  He  dwelt  in  the  Holy  Son  of  God  in  the  unity  of 
the  life  of  the  Godhead,  then  the  Church  will  be  able  to  do  the 
wonders  that  He  did,  the  power  of  the  Highest  will  come  upon 
her,  and  the  world  will  believe  that  the  Father  sent  the  Son 
to  be  the  Saviour. — (P.  T.  Forsythe,  The  Sunday  School  Times, 
January  9,  1909;  Art.  "Miraculous  Healing,  Then  and  Now.") 

The  missionaries  on  the  foreign  field  realise  the  vital  sig- 
nificance of  such  unity  in  the  fulfilment  of  their  aim.  "  We 
have  been  mourning  the  slow  progress  of  our  Churches  toward 
self-support,"  said  one  of  them,  the  Rev.  George  Chapman,  in 
the  discussion  on  Church  Unity  at  the  Japan  Missionary  Con- 
ference in  Tokyo,  in  1900,  "  and  many  remedies  are  proposed. 
But  here  is  the  root  evil,  get  rid  of  our  divisions  and  there  would 
soon  be  a  self-supporting  Church.  It  is  because  we  are  divided 
into  so  many  small  congregations  that  united  effort  for  self- 
support  is  impossible.  Once  let  them  come  together  and  it 
would  go  forward  by  leaps  and  bounds."  And  it  is  not  self- 
support  only  that  depends  upon  unity,  it  is  the  power  of  the 


MISSIONS  AND  UNITY  341 

native  Churches  to  become  real  national  Churches,  capable  of 
moulding  the  fast-moving  forces  which  are  bearing  the  Eastern 
nations  on  to  their  altered  destinies.  "  The  tasks  before  us  are 
tremendous  and  immediate,"  said  the  China  missionaries  in  one 
of  the  public  statements  of  their  last  conference.  "  Within  half 
a  generation  it  is  possible  for  Christianity  to  be  established  as 
the  most  decisive  force  in  Chinese  affairs.  To  this  task  we  pro- 
pose to  set  ourselves  with  renewed  devotion  and  a  new  sense 
of  urgency.  In  this  emergency  we  require  the  backing  and 
co-operation  of  Christendom.  Your  progress,  your  fellowship, 
your  efforts,  united  and  forceful  as  never  before,  are  a  source 
of  profound  gratitude  on  our  part.  It  is  not  less  important  that 
we,  in  the  far-flung  battle  line,  shall  be  one  in  spirit  and  aim, 
and  that  we  shall  co-operate  in  our  common  work.  This  has 
already  led  to  union  and  combination  in  educational  work,  in- 
creasing economy  of  working  force  by  division  of  labour  and 
frequent  consultations  in  our  plans.  At  the  present  conference, 
Protestant  missionaries,  representing  many  countries  and  many 
branches  of  the  Church  of  Christ,  have  come  to  a  new  realisa- 
tion of  our  unity,  and  have  given  definite  expression  to  a  com- 
mon desire  and  hope  that  in  China  we  shall  not  perpetuate 
our  Occidental  distinctions;  and  we  have  expressed  our  definite 
purpose  to  plant  one  Church  in  which  all  disciples  may  have 
a  common  fellowship  of  joy  and  service.  We  have  taken  action 
which  will  soon  result  in  organic  union  between  Churches  hav- 
ing a  common  policy.  And  we  have  planned  for  a  federation 
of  all  Christians  in  the  Empire.  In  these  deliberations  we  have 
been  conscious  of  divine  guidance,  without  which  all  our  plans 
must  fail."—  ("  Church  Federation,"  Second  Annual  Report, 
p.  off.) 

3.  These  words  of  the  China  missionaries,  summing  up  with 
grateful  joy  the  achievements  of  the  Spirit  of  God  in  unifying 
the  missions  in  China,  lead  us  on  to  enquire,  thirdly,  as  to  the 
measure  in  which  the  kind  of  unity  demanded  by  the  considera- 
tions we  have  reviewed  has  been  attained  on  the  foreign  field. 
(1)  In  the  first  place,  we  have  in  some  measure  desisted  from 
importing  into  the   various    foreign   fields   our   denominational 


342  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

titles  and  proprietary  claims.  Happily,  there  are  some  of  them 
that  cannot  be  translated.  We  do  not  regret  that  the  Chinese 
language  will  not  lend  itself  to  the  perpetuation  of  many  of  our 
names.  You  cannot  translate  the  word  Presbyterian  or  the  word 
Methodist  or  the  words  Protestant  Episcopal  into  a  great  many 
of  the  heathen  languages;  the  languages  have  no  such  terms. 
You  can  transliterate  them  and  then  teach  the  heathen  what 
the  names  mean,  but  they  have  no  words  that  correspond  to 
those  and  can  serve  as  translations  for  them.  Happily,  even  in 
the  lands  where  such  terms  exist,  the  missionaries  have  often 
been  wise  enough  to  sink  them  into  the  background.  It  was 
agreed  at  the  outset  in  the  Philippines,  for  example,  that  the 
evangelical  Churches  should  bear  one  common  Christian  name. 
If  anybody  wanted  to  throw  in  a  little  parenthesis  at  the  end, 
perpetuating  the  Western  denominational  name,  he  could  do 
so,  but  the  outstanding  conspicuous  name  was  one.  The  same 
agreement,  I  believe,  has  been  reached  in  Korea,  and  in  many 
other  lands  from  the  very  beginning  our  Western  denomina- 
tional titles  were  not  known.  And  while  here  and  there  a  par- 
ticular missionary  institution  may  bear  some  proprietary  title, 
yet  for  the  most  part  it  is  known  as  the  mission  hospital,  or 
the  mission  school,  or  the  mission  press,  and  no  particular  name 
is  tied  to  it  to  create  distinctions  in  the  minds  of  those  who 
may  know  of  it.  First  of  all,  then,  we  have  made  a  long  step 
in  advance  in  leaving  behind  us  the  names.  Abandon  the  names, 
and  the  ideas  that  the  old  names  embodied  will  sooner  or  later 
fade  away. 

(2)  In  the  second  place,  the  principle  of  territorial  divisions 
has  been  measurably  accepted.  Alexander  Duff  set  forth  his 
large-minded  views  on  the  subject,  views  which  some  missionary 
organisations  have  always  shared,  at  the  Union  Missionary  Con- 
vention held  in  New  York  City  on  the  occasion  of  Duff's  visit 
to  America  in  1854.  Speaking  of  the  assembling  of  missionaries 
in  centres  when  great  areas  were  still  unoccupied,  he  said : 

Now  why  remain  thus  crowded  together,  while  whole  regions 
are  left  entirely  destitute?  Why  not  rather  disperse?  Yes,  but 
one  will  answer,  "  My  flock  belongs  to  such  a  sect,  and  yours 


MISSIONS  AND  UNITY  343 

to  another,"  and  each  will  insist  on  maintaining  a  separate 
service,  as  if  he  must  go  to  Heaven  only  in  his  own  way.  I  do 
hope  and  trust  that  the  day  is  coming  when  this  divine  spirit — 
the  true  catholic  spirit — the  all-embracing  spirit  of  Christ — shall 
rise  up  in  the  midst  of  us — when  evangelical  Episcopalians,  or 
Presbyterians,  or  Baptists,  or  Congregationalists,  or  Methodists, 
will  say  to  each  other :  "  For  my  part,  if  the  Gospel  is  preached, 
I  do  not  care  whether  it  be  conveyed  through  an  Episcopalian 
tube,  or  a  Presbyterian  tube,  or  a  Congregational  tube,  or  any 
other."  What  a  blessed  spectacle  would  it  be  to  see  true  preach- 
ers of  the  Gospel  standing  up  together  and  saying  to  each  other : 
"  There  is  room  for  us  all.  If  you  remain  here,  then  I  shall 
go  hence,  or  I  will  remain  and  let  you  go.  There  is  space  enough 
and  work  enough  for  all ;  let  us  not  be  coming  into  collision  and 
apparent  contention.  ..."  The  foreign  missionary  field  is  of 
such  vast  extent  that  there  is  room  for  all,  without  encroaching 
on  each  other's  labours;  and  when  we  find  any  region  of  the 
heathen  field  preoccupied,  we  should  go  elsewhere  in  search  of 
labour,  as  there  is  plenty  of  vacant  territory.  If,  for  a  moment, 
I  could  wield  the  wand  of  despotic  power  for  a  good  purpose, 
I  would  go  to  the  heathen  field,  and  there  chalk  out  a  separate 
district  for  every  evangelical  denomination.  I  would  say  to  the 
Baptist,  do  you  go  there;  to  the  Episcopalian,  take  this  field; 
to  the  Presbyterian,  labour  in  that  district;  go  and  convert  them, 
and  then  baptise  them  all  in  whatever  way  you  deem  best. 

Among  the  resolutions  adopted  at  this  Convention,  embody- 
ing the  recommendations  of  Dr.  Duff,  was  one  approving  of  this 
principle  of  territorial  division: 

Resolved,  That  considering  the  vast  extent  of  the  yet  un- 
evangelised  world  of  heathenism,  and  the  limited  means  of  evan- 
gelisation at  the  disposal  of  the  existing  evangelical  Churches  or 
Societies,  it  would  be  very  desirable  that,  with  the  exception  of 
great  centres,  such  as  the  capitals  of  powerful  kingdoms,  an 
efficient  preoccupancy  of  any  particular  portion  of  the  heathen 
field  by  any  evangelical  Church  or  Society,  should  be  respected 
by  others  and  left  in  their  undisturbed  possession. 

If  all  the  foreign  missionaries  on  the  field  in  1900  had  been 
distributed  evenly  among  the  peoples,  there  would  have  been, 
counting  all  men  and  women,  one  to  each  60,000.     There  was 


344  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

one  ordained  man  to  each  200,000.  There  is  no  warrant  in  such 
facts  for  overlapping  and  duplication.  There  are  some  bodies, 
however,  which  are  unable  as  yet  in  conscience  to  accept  the 
principles  involved  in  permanent  territorial  divisions.  The  An- 
glican Bishops  in  India  in  their  conference  in  1900  resolved : 

(a)  In  view  of  difficulties  which  have  arisen  from  territorial 
agreements  made  between  different  missionary  bodies,  the  Synod 
holds  that  all  members  of  the  Church  of  England,  whether  Euro- 
pean or  Indian,  whatever  they  may  be,  have  a  right  to  the  minis- 
trations of  the  Church  to  which  they  belong,  and  that  it  is  the 
duty  of  all  Christian  congregations  to  be  centres  of  missionary 
activity. 

(b)  That,  therefore,  while  commending  the  spirit  of  the 
policy  in  accordance  with  which  the  missions  of  different  Chris- 
tian bodies  have  endeavoured  to  avoid  coming  into  collision  with 
one  another,  the  Synod  deprecates  any  such  territorial  agree- 
ments in  the  future. 

Some  other  bodies  have  felt  constrained  to  take  a  similar 
position.  Such  convictions  are  held  with  open-mindedness,  how- 
ever, and  are  acted  upon  with  reluctance,  and  those  who  hold 
them,  as  well  as  those  who  hold  with  Alexander  Duff,  wait  for 
the  larger  time  when  they  will  be  not  abandoned  but  transcended, 
swallowed  up  in  the  comprehending  Church ;  and  meanwhile  it 
can  be  said  that  the  essential  principle  of  territorial  responsi- 
bility has  been  generally  accepted  by  all  missionary  bodies  save 
one,  of  which  I  shall  speak  presently. 

(3)  In  the  third  place,  the  different  Christian  bodies  in  the 
foreign  field  have  come,  in  the  main,  to  recognise  the  ordinances 
and  the  acts  of  discipline  of  other  Christian  organisations,  so 
that  if  in  any  one  territory  men  are  baptised,  they  are  baptised 
for  the  territory  of  other  Churches  also,  and  if  in  any  one 
territory  acts  of  discipline  lie  upon  agents  of  the  native  Church, 
the  validity  of  those  acts  is  acknowledged  in  other  Christian 
organisations  whether  adjacent  or  far  away. 

(4)  In  the  fourth  place,  we  have  reached  on  the  mission  field 
an  advanced  union  in  the  spirit  of  prayer.  Our  Week  of  Prayer 
sprang  from  the  foreign  field.     It  was  in  its  inception  a  great 


MISSIONS  AND  UNITY  345 

appeal  in  prayer  for  the  pouring  out  of  God's  spirit  upon  the 
unevangelised  world.  The  united  prayer  movements  from  that 
day  have  usually  been  related  in  one  way  or  another  to  the 
foreign  mission  field.  Appeal  after  appeal  has  gone  out  within 
the  last  ten  years  on  the  mission  field  to  missionaries  of  every 
name  to  unite  themselves  in  common  supplication.  It  is  doubtful 
whether  there  is  any  one  object  in  the  world  for  which  as  large 
a  volume  of  prayer  is  rising  now  all  over  the  nations  as  for 
this  one  thing,  the  unity  of  Christendom  in  its  representation 
of  Christ  to  the  non-Christian  World.  A  noble  illustration  of 
this  unity  in  prayer,  typical  of  many,  was  the  call  sent  out  in 
1901  by  Bishop  Foss  and  Bishop  Awdry  of  the  Anglican  Church 
in  Japan,  which  they  prefaced  by  a  reference  to  the  conference 
of  "  leading  members  of  the  Presbyterian  and  Episcopal  Churches 
in  Scotland,"  in  1900,  "  to  consider  what  could  be  done  in  view 
of  the  sin,  loss,  and  wretchedness  of  the  unhappy  divisions  of 
the  one  Church."    This  was  their  outline  of  subjects: 

Penitence  for  any  wilfulness,  prejudice,  worldliness,  or  evil 
temper  in  ourselves  or  our  predecessors  which  may  have  helped 
to  bring  about  a  condition  of  Christendom  so  different  from  that 
for  which  our  Lord  prayed. 

Prayer  for  such  change  and  enlightenment  of  our  own  hearts 
as  may  help  toward  the  undoing  of  this  great  evil — for  the  graces 
of  wisdom,  humility,  sincerity,  unworldliness,  self-control,  and 
open  mind,  reverence  for  others  who  sincerely  disagree  with  us, 
complete  subordination  of  our  self-will  to  the  will  of  God,  a 
firm  hold  on  truth,  a  spiritual  mind — in  short,  the  mind  which 
was  in  Christ  Jesus. 

Prayer  for  the  removal  of  obstacles — in  the  character  of  pro- 
fessing Christians,  in  heredity  and  other  prejudice,  in  narrowness 
of  views,  in  special  shibboleths,  in  unworthy  rivalries,  in  exag- 
gerated attachment  to  non-essentials. 

Prayer  for  a  fuller  outpouring  of  the  Holy  Spirit  in  His 
various  powers,  and  for  a  more  ready  recognition  of  the  work 
of  the  Spirit  in  others  in  whom  the  "  fruits  of  the  Spirit "  are 
apparent. 

Thanksgiving  for  the  growing  sense  of  sin  in  regard  to  our 
divisions,  and  of  longing  for  unity ;  and  for  the  better  hope  which 
this  gives  of  the  world  being  won  to  believe  in  the  mission  of 
Our  Lord  Jesus  Christ. 


346  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

One  may  see  in  this  gathering  volume  of  prayer  a  ground 
of  hope  for  the  removal  of  the  most  massive  obstacle  in  the  way 
of  the  union  of  Christendom,  I  mean  the  errant  conscientious- 
ness of  Christian  people.  It  has  been  the  case  from  the  begin- 
ning that  the  greatest  evils  have  succeeded  in  rooting  themselves 
in  the  consciences  of  men.  "  The  day  will  come,"  our  Lord  told 
His  disciples,  "  when  those  who  kill  you  will  think  that  they  do 
service  unto  God."  It  was  that  very  conviction  that  would  make 
them  so  merciless  and  implacable.  It  has  ever  been  so.  Men 
transfer  to  their  own  fallible  consciences  the  absolute  authority 
of  the  divine  standard  which  they  have  misread.  We  hide  behind 
what  we  call  our  conscientiousness  of  principle  as  though  that 
were  an  adequate  reason  for  delaying  the  day  of  the  unity  of  the 
Church.  A  principle  is  not  necessarily  sound  because  it  is 
conscientious.  It  is  dangerous,  but  not  necessarily  sound.  The 
very  thing  that  we  stand  most  in  need  of  to-day  is  such  a 
searching  of  the  eyes  of  God  upon  our  inner  life  as  will  reveal 
to  us  the  moral  colour  blindness,  the  obliquity  of  vision,  the 
distortion  of  judgment,  and  the  misconception  of  His  spirit  in 
our  own  hearts,  which  stand  most  in  the  way  of  the  unity  of 
the  body  in  the  life  of  our  Lord.  And  we  shall  never  have 
that  exposure,  that  revelation  of  our  own  misguided  conscien- 
tiousness until  we  come  in  prayer,  in  great  humility  and  self- 
distrust,  to  the  fear  that  where  we  think  we  stand  we  may 
have  fallen  worst,  in  His  sight  whose  eyes  search  us  and  dis- 
cern the  truth. 

(5)  In  the  fifth  place,  both  at  home  and  on  many  mission 
fields,  central  bodies,  more  or  less  representative,  have  been  estab- 
lished for  the  prosecution  of  co-operative  work  or  for  the 
nourishment  of  fraternity  or  for  the  adjustment  of  difficulties. 
In  America  for  nearly  twenty  years  the  officers  and  members 
of  the  foreign  mission  organisations  have  been  meeting  an- 
nually for  conference,  and  have  now  established  in  addition  a 
central  Committee  of  Reference  and  Counsel  to  act  in  matters 
of  common  interest,  and  to  which  any  question  of  divergent 
judgment  may  be  referred.  The  Conference  of  Missionaries  in 
India,  held  at  Madras  in  1900,  voted  to  set  up,  with  the  con- 


MISSIONS  AND  UNITY  347 

sent  of  the  home  boards,  a  central  Court  of  Arbitration  and 
Appeal  with  seven  provincial  courts,  and  appointed  represent- 
atives of  forty  different  missionary  societies  on  the  committee 
to  organise  the  court.  It  proposed  the  scheme  in  the  hope,  as 
it  said,  that  it  would  "  reduce  to  a  minimum  the  evils  of  rivalry 
and  competition,  guard  against  the  sin  of  wasting  our  Lord's 
money,  give  increased  efficiency  to  existing  agencies,  spread 
the  Gospel  more  swiftly  into  the  regions  beyond,  and  demon- 
strate before  the  world  the  essential  oneness  of  Protestant  Chris- 
tianity." Twenty-five  of  the  societies  concurred  at  once,  ap- 
proved of  the  plan,  and  the  courts  have  now  been  constituted, 
with  the  duty  not  only  of  deciding  upon  questions  referred  to 
them,  but  also  of  securing  information  regarding  unoccupied 
fields  and  of  suggesting  what  may  be  done  to  provide  for  them. 
At  the  beginning  of  the  work  in  the  Philippine  Islands,  a  divi- 
sion of  territory  was  arranged,  and  "  The  Evangelical  Union 
of  the  Philippine  Islands "  was  organised,  whose  object  was 
stated  to  be  "  to  unite  all  the  evangelical  forces  in  the  Philippine 
Islands  for  the  purpose  of  securing  comity  and  effectiveness  in 
their  missionary  operations."  The  Tokyo  Conference  of  Mis- 
sionaries in  Japan  in  1900  created  "  The  Standing  Committee 
of  Co-operating  Christian  Missions  in  Japan,"  with  the  function 
of  uniting  the  missions  in  co-operative  efforts  and  "  with  a 
view,"  as  its  constitution  stated,  "  to  the  prevention  of  mis- 
understandings and  the  promotion  of  harmony  of  spirit  and 
uniformity  of  method."  A  year  before,  the  missionary  agencies 
working  in  Western  China,  including  American  Methodists  and 
Baptists,  Canadian  Methodists,  English  Congregationalists,  An- 
glicans, Friends,  and  the  China  Inland  Mission  had  set  up  an 
Advisory  Board  of  Reference  and  Co-operation,  and  approved 
of  general  principles  of  policy,  including  a  division  of  the  field, 
with  the  object  of  promoting  "  such  a  spirit  of  harmony 
and  co-operation  as  shall  tend  to  the  speedier  and  more 
complete  occupation  of  the  whole  wide  field  by  the  mes- 
sengers of  the  Gospel,"  and  none  denied  this  title  to  any 
of  the  others.  I  will  speak  of  but  one  other  such  organisa- 
tion.    Mr.  Findlay  described  it  some  years  ago  in  an  address 


348  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

to    the    National    Council    of    Free    Churches    at    Cardiff    in 
1901 : 

The  trend  towards  co-operation  which  these  great  combined 
enterprises,  and  many  smaller  ones,  have  for  years  exhibited  and 
encouraged  in  South  India,  and  which  also  has  been  fostered  in 
local  councils  and  conferences,  issued  four  years  ago  in  the 
formation  of  a  South  Indian  Missionary  Association,  which  now 
embraces  more  than  two-thirds  of  the  whole  Protestant  mission- 
ary force  of  South  India.  The  objects  of  this  Association  are 
parallel  to  those  of  your  National  Council,  though  its  constituency 
is  much  wider.  The  sub-committee  which  drafted  its  constitution 
consisted  of  an  American  Congregationalist,  an  English  High 
Churchman,  and  an  English  Methodist.  Its  membership  includes 
State  Churchmen  and  Free  Churchmen,  Lutherans  of  Germany, 
Switzerland,  Denmark,  Sweden,  and  America ;  Scotch  and  Amer- 
ican Presbyterians,  Episcopalians,  Baptists,  Methodists,  Congre- 
gationalists,  Plymouth  Brethren,  all  united  to  practise  fraternal 
intercourse,  to  take  common  counsel  and  to  undertake  common 
action.  This  Association  arranges  conferences,  focuses  mission- 
ary opinion,  and  expresses  it,  on  occasion,  to  the  Government 
and  the  public,  and  seeks  to  organise  and  utilise  inter-mission 
co-operation  in  every  possible  way.  As  specimens  of  its  activity 
may  be  mentioned  a  directory  of  institutions  available  for  the 
common  service,  a  board  of  vernacular  examinations  for  mission- 
aries, and  a  representative  committee,  which  is  preparing  a  com- 
mon hymn-book  for  the  whole  Tamil  Church.  Missionaries  of 
twenty-four  out  of  the  twenty-five  Protestant  Societies  at  work 
in  South  India  are  found  in  this  Association ;  and  it  may  be 
doubted  whether  there  has  ever  before  been  witnessed  the  organ- 
ised association  for  active  service  of  Christian  workers  of  so 
many  varieties  of  nationality,  thought,  and  ecclesiastical  system. 

And  this  co-operation  has  not  been  left  to  such  general  com- 
mittees and  conferences.  It  has  expressed  itself  in  organised  and 
continuous  work.  In  China,  the  medical  missionaries  of  all 
Churches  have  formed  a  medical  association,  which  pursues  in- 
vestigations, issues  a  journal,  and  is  publishing  medical  text- 
books. The  educational  missionaries  likewise  have  established 
an  educational  association  with  like  purposes,  and  holding  a  tri- 
ennial meeting  for  common  conference.  Common  hymn-books 
are  in  use  in  Brazil,  Japan,  South  India,  and  Spanish-speaking 


MISSIONS  AND  UNITY  349 

lands.  And  I  can  count  twenty  different  institutions,  three  of 
them  theological  schools,  where  different  denominations,  repre- 
senting different  polities  and  creeds,  have  united  themselves  to 
support  and  conduct  such  institutions  as  union  organisations. 

(6)  In  the  sixth  place,  this  union  among  missionaries  and 
their  missions  has  issued  in  some  fields,  and  notably  in  China, 
the  greatest  of  all,  in  a  national  federation  with  a  national  coun- 
cil and  provincial  councils,  with  provision  for  regular  meetings, 
and  the  work  of  this  federation  is  to  be  "  (a)  To  encourage 
everything  that  will  demonstrate  the  existing  essential  unity  of 
Christians.  To  watch  for  opportunities  of  united  prayer  and 
mutual  conference  between  representatives  of  different  bodies 
of  Christians  in  China;  and  as  opportunity  offers,  to  initiate 
and  arrange  for  representative  meetings  for  the  furtherance  of 
the  ideal  of  one  Christian  Church  for  China,  (b)  To  devise 
and  recommend  plans  whereby  the  whole  field  can  be  worked 
most  efficiently,  and  with  the  greatest  economy  in  men  and 
time  and  money,  (c)  To  promote  union  in  educational  work, 
(d)  The  encouragement  of  the  consideration  of  all  questions 
as  to  how  the  various  phases  of  Christian  work  can  be  carried 
on  most  efficiently,  e.g.,  translation  and  literary  work,  social 
work,  medical  work,  evangelistic  work,  etc.  (e)  And  in  general, 
to  endeavour  to  secure  harmonious,  co-operant,  and  more  ef- 
fective work  throughout  the  whole  Empire." 

(7)  But  the  ideal  of  foreign  missions  is  not  realised  by 
a  federation  of  separate  agencies.  It  contemplates  a  united 
Church,  not  a  compact  of  separate  units,  but  one  corporate  and 
manifested  life.  The  whole  body  of  missionaries  in  Japan  in 
the  Conference  in  1900,  set  forth  this  ideal :  "  This  Conference 
of  Missionaries,  assembled  in  the  City  of  Tokyo,  proclaims  its 
belief  that  all  those  who  are  one  with  Christ  by  faith  are  one 
body ;  and  it  calls  upon  all  those  who  love  the  Lord  Jesus  and 
His  Church  in  sincerity  and  truth,  to  pray  and  to  labour  for 
the  full  realisation  of  such  a  corporate  oneness  as  the  Master 
Himself  prayed  for  on  that  night  in  which  He  was  betrayed." 

And  they  had  in  mind  in  this,  their  representatives  have  told 
us,  not  simply  a  strengthening  of  the  bonds  "  that  bind  together 


350  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

individual  believers ;  but  a  corporate  oneness,  a  oneness  of  the 
Churches  as  Churches  that  shall  be  manifest  to  all  the  world." 

That  such  a  unity  [they  said]  is  according  to  the  mind  of 
Christ  needs  no  other  proof  than  His  own  prayer  in  the  upper 
room ;  and  His  own  reason  therein  given  is  one  that  appeals 
with  constraining  persuasiveness  to  all  who  are  in  sympathy  with 
Him  in  His  longing  that  the  world  may  believe.  This  has  always 
been  true;  but  to-day  the  old  truth  is  proclaiming  itself  with 
peculiar  insistence.  The  divisions  of  Christendom  are  seen  with 
a  new  clearness  to  be  a  stone  of  stumbling;  and  many  Christian 
lips  are  repeating  the  prayer  of  the  Master  as  it  has  not  been 
repeated  for  centuries.  If  there  are  any  whom  this  concerns, 
it  concerns  those  who  have  come  to  this  land  for  the  evangelisa- 
tion of  the  nation, — "  that  it  may  know  that  Thou  didst  send 
Me."  For  it  may  be  that  the  pathway  to  the  consummation  of 
that  purpose  is  to  be  found  in  obedience  to  the  words,  that  they 
may  all  be  one  that  the  world  may  believe. 

The  difficulties  in  the  way  of  corporate  oneness,  in  whichever 
form  it  is  contemplated,  are  manifold.  There  are  old  wounds 
still  rankling.  There  are  prejudices  that  have  transformed  them- 
selves into  principles.  The  all  but  resistless  forces  of  heredity 
and  environment  are  arrayed  in  opposition.  Pride  and  fear  and 
doubt  and  distrust  are  all  clamant.  There  are  differences  of  edu- 
cation, of  sentiment,  of  conviction,  that  insist  upon  recognition 
and  consideration.  The  yoke  must  needs  be  worn  of  a  meek 
and  lowly  spirit.  But  with  God  all  things  are  possible.  This 
is  the  thought  of  the  letter;  it  is  a  call  to  united  prayer.  Hand 
in  hand  with  prayer  will  go  effort;  and  by  taking  thought,  by 
earnest  endeavour,  by  patience,  by  charity,  by  courage,  by  a 
closer  fellowship  with  Christ,  stepping  stones  will  be  found ; 
but  the  great  hope  is  in  prayer  by  many  for  this  very  thing.  In 
Thy  light  shall  we  see  light. 

The  same  noble  ideal  and  longing  have  filled  the  minds 
and  hearts  of  the  missionaries  in  China.  In  the  Centenary 
Conference  they  declared : 

That  in  planting  the  Church  of  Christ  on  Chinese  soil,  we  desire 
only  to  plant  one  Church  under  the  sole  control  of  the  Lord 
Jesus  Christ,  governed  by  the  Word  of  the  Living  God,  and  led 
by  His  guiding  Spirit.  While  freely  communicating  to  this 
Church  the  knowledge  of  Truth,  and  the  rich  historical  experience 


MISSIONS  AND  UNITY  35* 

to  which  older  Churches  have  attained,  we  fully  recognise  the 
liberty  in  Christ  of  the  Churches  in  China  planted  by  means  of 
the  Missions  and  Churches  which  we  represent,  in  so  far  as 
these  Churches  are,  by  maturity  of  Christian  character  and  ex- 
perience, fitted  to  exercise  it;  and  we  desire  to  commit  them 
in  faith  and  hope  to  the  continued  safe-keeping  of  their  Lord, 
when  the  time  shall  arrive,  which  we  eagerly  anticipate,  when 
they  shall  pass  beyond  our  guidance  and  control. 

That  in  this  view  we  cordially  undertake  to  submit  very 
respectfully  to  the  home  Churches  which  have  sent  us  to  China, 
the  following  recommendations : 

(a)  That  they  should  sanction  the  recognition  by  their  mis- 
sionaries of  the  right  of  the  Churches  in  China  planted  by  them 
to  organise  themselves  in  accordance  with  their  own  views  of 
truth  and  duty,  suitable  arrangements  being  made  for  the  due 
representation  of  the  missionaries  on  their  governing  bodies  until 
these  Churches  shall  be  in  a  position  to  assume  the  full  responsi- 
bilities of  self-support  and  self-government. 

(b)  That  they  should  abstain  from  claiming  any  permanent 
right  of  spiritual  or  administrative  control  over  these  Churches. 


No  general  conference  of  missionaries  in  India  has  as  yet 
embraced  and  uttered  this  ideal  of  one  national  Church,  but 
the  General  Assembly  of  the  Presbyterian  Church  in  India, 
itself  a  union  of  all  the  Presbyterian  bodies  but  one,  appointed 
at  its  meeting  in  1907  a  committee  of  twenty  Indians  and  two 
missionaries  to  enter  into  correspondence  with  other  mission- 
aries and  Churches  with  a  view  to  a  larger  than  a  mere  Pres- 
byterian union,  and  it  prefaced  its  resolutions  with  a  recogni- 
tion of  "  the  advantages  that  would  accrue  to  the  cause  of 
Christ  in  India  by  a  realisation  of  Christ's  prayer  that  all  may 
be  one,"  and  by  the  declarations  that  "  our  aim  is  to  secure 
a  united  indigenous  Church  of  Indian  Christians,  rather  than 
one  of  foreign  missionaries  with  its  peculiarly  Western  char- 
acteristics," and  "  that  the  Indian  brethren,  as  far  as  possible, 
should  be  responsible  for  its  development,  that  the  future  Church 
may  grow  in  harmony  with  Oriental  rather  than  Occidental 
ideas." 

The  great  organic  unifications  which  these  utterances  from 
the  three  greatest  mission  lands  propose  have  already  begun. 


352  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

The  elimination  of  denominational  lines  is  now  taking  place. 
In  at  least  nine  cases  they  have  been  already  eliminated.  There 
have  been  three  great  eliminations  in  Japan.  The  Episcopal 
Churches  of  Great  Britain  and  America  are  now  one  in  Japan. 
All  Presbyterian  and  Reformed  bodies  have  been  one  in  Japan 
for  twenty-five  years.  All  the  Methodist  bodies  were  made  or- 
ganically one  in  Japan  a  year  or  two  ago.  There  is  scarcely 
a  mission  field  where  there  have  not  been  instances  of  this  or- 
ganic melting  together  of  different  denominations.  In  every 
country  where  the  Northern  and  Southern  Presbyterian 
Churches  of  America  are  working,  outside  of  the  United  States, 
they  are  working  as  one  organic  Church.  In  the  Christian 
land  of  America  they  are  two.  In  every  heathen  land  they  are 
one.  In  India,  three  or  four  years  ago  all  but  one  of  the  Presby- 
terian and  Reformed  Churches  and  the  Calvinistic  Methodists 
came  together  in  one  Church  of  Christ  for  India,  and  only  this 
last  year  the  southern  section  of  that  Church  separated  from  the 
rest  with  good-will  and  approval,  in  order  to  unite  with  the 
English  and  American  Congregationalists  of  South  India  and 
make  a  larger  union  numerically,  a  larger  union  in  the  inclusion 
of  different  types  of  denominations,  although  for  a  little  while 
it  made  a  smaller  union  geographically.  But  it  was  done  as  a 
step  to  the  larger  union  yet  to  be.  Organic  unity  is  not  a  mere 
missionary  theory.  It  is  in  some  measure  already  an  accom- 
plished fact. 

The  foreign  missionary  movement  in  these  attainments  in 
Christian  unity  is  exerting  a  powerful  influence  upon  the  Church 
at  home. 

( i )  It  is  showing  the  Church  at  home  the  possibility  of 
union,  not  only  of  co-operation  in  work  or  of  federation  of 
separate  Christian  bodies,  but  of  actual  union.  There  are  not 
wanting  those  both  at  home  and  on  the  foreign  field  who  believe 
that  our  divisions  are  to  be  perpetual.  An  editorial  in  the 
Baptist  Missionary  Reviezv  of  India,  for  April,  1907,  maintains 
this  view :  "  We  do  not  believe,"  it  says,  "  that  there  will  ever 
be  any  such  thing  as  '  The  Church  of  India.'  History  is  not 
going  to  be  reversed  in  India.     There  have  been,  are  now,  and 


MISSIONS  AND  UNITY  353 

always  will  be,  denominations."  But  the  same  article  was  ad- 
vocating an  unprecedented  union  of  Baptists.  If  it  is  possible 
and  right  for  Baptists  to  surrender  their  individualism  and  in- 
dependency in  favour  of  denominational  union,  may  it  not  be 
possible  and  right  for  all  Christians  to  act  on  the  same  com- 
prehending principle  and  become  one  with  a  unity  which  will 
comprehend  and  preserve  their  freedom?  Our  denominations 
did  not  always  exist.  What  right  have  we  to  assume  that  the 
sectarian  phenomena  of  the  last  three  or  four  centuries  are  to 
be  the  permanent  characteristics  of  Christendom,  and  are  of 
superior  validity  to  the  order  of  the  New  Testament,  and  that 
any  hope  of  rising  above  them  into  the  unity  for  which  our 
Lord  dared  to  pray,  is  vain?  The  attainments  already  made 
in  union  on  the  foreign  mission  field  should  teach  us  wisdom. 
We  are  uniting  there.  What  we  can  do  there,  we  can  do  here. 
(2)  The  missionary  movement  is  teaching  us  also  the  duty 
of  union.  The  missionaries  have  realised  that  they  ought  to 
be  one.  For  similar  reasons  and  for  additional  reasons  we  ought 
to  be  one  at  home,  and  we  ought  to  be  one  for  the  sake  of 
the  effect  of  such  unity  at  home  on  the  growth  of  unity  abroad. 
It  is  from  home  that  unity  should  pass  out  over  the  world  as 
one  of  the  marks  of  the  Church.  In  the  discussion  of  Christian 
union  at  the  Tokyo  Conference  one  of  the  missionaries  asked 
to  whom  the  proposed  resolution  of  the  Conference  was  ad- 
dressed. "  If  to  the  Japanese  Churches,"  said  he,  "  they  will 
say  to  us,  '  Why  are  you  not  united  among  yourselves  ?  It 
is  your  divisions  that  keep  us  separated.'  "  Happily,  our  divi- 
sions at  home  have  not  held  the  missionaries  apart,  although 
there  are  those  among  them  who  do  not  feel  free  to  participate 
in  the  great  uniting  movements  of  the  time  because  their 
Churches  at  home  still  hold  aloof.  "  They  must  take  the  step 
before  we  can,"  they  say.  History  is  developing  the  contrary 
course,  but  it  is  doing  so  without  relieving  the  home  Churches 
of  their  duty  to  participate  in  a  movement  essential  to  the  ful- 
filment of  the  task  of  Christianity  in  the  world,  to  bring  the 
Gospel  home  to  each  man  and  each  nation,  and  to  unify  man- 
kind. 


354  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

(3)  And  the  foreign  mission  movement  is  not  only  showing 
the  Church  the  possibility  and  duty  of  union,  it  is  also  revealing 
to  it  the  method,  (a)  It  has  shown  us  the  uniting  power  of 
a  great  work.  The  immensity  of  the  common  task,  the  essential 
oneness  of  aim  of  all  engaged  in  that  task  press  the  workers 
together  in  spite  of  their  unacquaintance  and  their  dissonant  tra- 
ditions. When  men  are  not  united  in  their  work,  they  can  easily 
remain  apart,  exalting  the  secondary  things  into  fundamental 
principles,  but  when  they  are  seeking  the  evangelisation  of  a 
world,  the  primary  things  assert  their  dominance,  and  men  dis- 
cover that  they  are  agreed,  and  their  divisions  are  at  once  as 
good  as  dead  because  they  are  forgotten.  Dr.  Swift,  the  great 
spirit  who  laid  the  foundation  of  the  foreign  missionary  organi- 
sation of  the  American  Presbyterian  Church,  understood  this 
principle  and  expressed  it  in  one  of  the  first  reports  of  the 
Board,  referring  to  the  temporary  abandonment  by  the  Church 
in  1826  of  her  corporate  responsibility  as  a  missionary  agency, 
and  to  the  later  separation  of  the  Church  into  New  and  Old 
Schools :  "  Had  the  commotions  which  now  agitate  the  Church," 
said  he,  "  found  its  ministry  and  its  Churches  bound  together  by 
the  hallowed  ties  of  one  harmonious  and  life-inspiring  effort  to 
evangelise  the  world,  those  waves  whose  rockings  now  threaten 
her  destruction  would  scarcely  have  left  the  trace  of  their  exist- 
ence. .  .  .  The  days  of  division  and  inaction  cannot  last  for- 
ever. The  Spirit  of  God  will  return  in  glory  and  in  power  to 
the  Churches,  and  the  spirit  of  love  and  concord  to  the  Saints." 
Common  aims  and  honest  effort  to  realise  those  aims  have  made 
us  one  abroad.  They  can  make  us  one  at  home.  More  than 
that,  they  require  unity  of  us.  As  Dr.  Henderson  said  in 
his  final  address  as  Moderator  of  the  United  Free  Church  As- 
sembly in  1909 :  "  Fathers  and  brethren,  may  I  so  far  allude  to 
the  great  subject  of  Church  Union  as  to  say  that  nothing  will 
so  effectively  and  so  truly  prepare  for  it  as  such  development 
of  our  spiritual  life  by  active  service.  If  it  is  to  come  as  a 
blessing — which  God  grant  it  may  speedily — it  will  be  as  a 
union  of  those  who  labour  for  it  from  a  supreme  desire  for 
fuller  and  freer  service;   from  a  pressing  need  of  developing 


MISSIONS  AND  UNITY  355 

a  free  and  fruitful  life  in  direct  obedience  to  the  will  of  Christ. 
Hindrances  which  thwart  such  spiritual  aspirations  will  become 
intolerable,  and  their  removal  will  be  demanded  at  all  costs. 
And  union  will  come,  not  by  mere  good-will  wishing  for  it,  or 
adroit  scheming  to  bring  it  about,  but  when  an  awakened  sense 
of  the  urgency  of  spiritual  service  thrusts  out  of  its  way  all 
that  opposes  itself  to  the  doing  of  the  will  of  Christ." 

(b)  It  has  shown  us  the  power  of  fellowship  in  spite  of 
difference  of  opinion  to  dissolve  the  difference  by  purifying  it 
of  the  error  on  each  side,  which  creates  it,  and  to  cleanse  men's 
hearts  of  the  pride  and  vanity  which  alone  enable  them  to 
stand  aloof  from  their  brothers.  I  cannot  illustrate  better  the 
spirit  which  the  foreign  mission  movement  would  teach  us 
all  than  by  the  words  of  one  of  the  most  trusted  missionary 
leaders  of  our  day,  the  Bishop  of  the  American  Episcopal  Church 
in  the  Philippine  Islands,  Dr.  Brent,  in  his  charge  of  June  26, 
1907.  He  has  asked  where  the  true  Church  is  to  be  found,  and 
then  he  answers : 

"  It  partly  is  and  wholly  hopes  to  be."  One  group  of  men  says 
her  hall-mark  is  submission  to  Peter's  chair;  another,  loyalty 
to  the  Bible;  another,  adherence  to  the  Vincentian  motto,  or 
perhaps  to  two-thirds  of  it ;  another,  acceptance  of  the  belief 
and  practice  of  the  first  six  centuries ;  another,  the  principles  of 
the  Reformation,  and  so  on,  each  group  reaching  its  decision 
according  to  its  training,  tastes,  interpretation  of  history,  or 
prejudice.  If,  as  Father  Tyrrell  suggests,  any  one  Church  or 
school  of  thought  within  a  Church  could  "  point  triumphantly 
to  the  Christian  r)do<;  of  that  Church,  to  the  religious  spirit 
developed  by  her  system  as  by  no  other,"  external  marks  and 
claims  would  merit  higher  respect  than  is  the  case.  Neither 
the  Roman,  the  Greek,  any  of  the  Protestant  Churches  with 
which  I  am  familiar,  nor  our  own  exhibits  a  superior  "  Christian 
t)6oS."  Each  has  its  own  distinctive  type  of  righteousness  and 
its  individual  disposition.  But  the  same  degree  of  devotion  to 
Jesus  Christ,  of  hunger  and  thirst  after  righteousness,  of  brother- 
liness,  is  found  somewhere  in  each  and  all  of  the  Churches  alike, 
though  in  no  one  exclusively  or  pre-eminently.  Naturally,  we 
ally  ourselves  with  that  Church  which  presents  the  type  most 
congenial  to  us.  Whatever  historic  or  theoretic  necessities  con- 
stitute the  qualifications  for  Catholic  recognition,  no  body  that 


356  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

manifestly  and  progressively  struggles  to  put  on  the  mind  of 
Christ,  and  whose  adherents  bear  those  clear  tokens  of  God's 
Spirit  that  cannot  be  simulated — self-sacrifice  to  the  death  for 
Christ's  sake,  triumph  over  sin,  world-wide  love — can  be  read 
out  of  the  Church  of  the  living  God.  To  say  that  Protestant 
Churches  in  that  they  have  abandoned  a  certain  historic  order 
are  not  Catholic  according  to  a  fixed  definition  may  be  true, 
but  it  is  idle  folly  to  think  or  speak  or  act  as  though  they  were 
not  of  the  Church  of  the  living  God  Who,  although  He  designed 
a  visible  unity,  has  proved  to  those  who  are  not  too  blind  to 
see,  that  He  can  and  does  use  the  broken  order  which  man 
has  chosen  in  its  place.  As  well  might  the  gardener  who  prophesies 
that  a  certain  plant  will  not  live  if  reared  in  unwonted  conditions 
deny  that  it  has  true  life  when  experience  proves  that  its  vitality 
is  full  and  its  beauty  unimpaired.  What  God  hath  cleansed,  that 
call  not  thou  common. 

The  logic  of  the  situation  requires  us  to  look  with  greater 
fairness  on  the  things  of  our  brethren,  and  to  put  off  the  spirit 
of  aloofness  which  Christ  exhibited  only  in  the  presence  of  de- 
liberate wickedness  and  hardness  of  heart.  The  doctrine  of 
separatism  cannot  but  be  hateful  to  God.  Out  of  the  very  stones 
will  He  raise  up  children  to  Abraham,  as  history  declares,  if 
Abraham's  lineal  descendants  lapse  into  Pharisaism,  pointing 
to  phylacteries  inscribed  with  the  pride  of  aristocratic  descent 
as  their  sufficient  credentials.  Our  first  duty  all  around  is  to 
cease  theological  and  ecclesiastical  backbiting  and  to  be  loyal  to 
one  another  in  secret — not  to  try  to  win  Christians  from  the 
allegiance  that  binds  them  by  sneering  at  or  decrying  systems  of 
teaching  that  we  do  not  sympathise  with  mainly  because  we  have 
never  been  at  pains  to  understand  them.  It  is  a  poor  business 
tearing  down  other  people's  walls  to  build  up  our  own.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  is  a  great  happiness  to  repair  the  breach  in  a 
neighbour's  fabric ;  that  is  to  say,  to  help  the  member  of  another 
Church  to  lay  hold  of  his  privileges  with  renewed  earnestness 
and  reality.  I  have  had  many  a  surprise  of  late  since  I  have 
faced  vexed  questions,  with  the  determination  to  do  full  justice 
to  the  point  of  view  opposed  to  mine.  There  are  not  a  few 
things  that  are  looked  upon  as  mutually  exclusive  which,  accord- 
ing to  my  experience,  best  fulfil  their  vocation  when  they  are 
made  to  be  yoke-fellows. 

The  cultivation  of  the  Catholic  as  opposed  to  the  sectarian 
spirit  is  our  greatest  work  at  present.  I  am  not  opposing  frank, 
open  controversy,  feeble  and  unwilling  controversialist  though 
I  am.     Controversy  conducted  in  good  temper  and  in  search  of 


MISSIONS  AND  UNITY  357 

the  truth  is  valuable.  I  am  simply  pleading  for  the  putting  on 
of  the  mind  of  Christ  that  we  may  look  on  the  things  of  others 
interestedly  and  fairly.  We  can  best  prepare  for  it  by  identifying 
ourselves,  when  we  pray,  with  those  who  are  separated  from  us 
by  chance  rather  than  by  choice.  My  hope  is  that  the  develop- 
ment of  this  temper  will  lead  us  by  degrees  to  natural  fellow- 
ship, culminating  first  in  federal,  and  then,  as  "  state  rights  " 
gradually  fade,  into  organic  union.  Christianity  is  still  very 
young,  the  youngest  but  one  of  all  great  religions,  and  I  am 
looking  centuries  ahead  of  to-day. 

But  we  must  labour  as  well  as  hope.  If  our  Communion 
is  to  justify  its  boast  of  holding  a  strategic  position  and  its  claim 
to  leadership,  we  must  shed,  more  than  we  have  yet  seen  fit 
to  do,  our  reserve,  and  play  the  part  of  foremost  companion. 
Consciousness  of  the  possession  of  large  privilege  should  drive 
us  into  the  performance  of  service  commensurate  with  our  claims. 
Truth  is  not  such  a  delicate  thing  as  to  be  susceptible  to  infection 
from  close  contact  with  conscientious  error  or  ignorance  that 
has  never  had  a  fair  chance  to  become  enlightened.  It  does  not 
sit  passively  on  a  throne  in  heaven  waiting  for  earth  to  seek  it, 
or  at  best  stretch  down  a  timid  hand  from  above.  Christ  Jesus, 
the  Way  and  the  Truth  and  the  Life,  being  in  the  form  of  God, 
counted  it  not  a  price  to  be  on  equality  with  God,  but  emptied 
Himself,  taking  the  form  of  a  servant,  being  made  in  the  likeness 
of  men;  and  being  found  in  fashion  as  a  man,  He  humbled 
Himself,  becoming  obedient  even  unto  death,  yea,  the  death  of 
the  cross.  He  consorted  with  notorious  sinners.  Him  who  knew 
no  sin  God  made  to  be  sin  on  our  behalf.  He  lived  the  life  of  a 
Jew,  obeying  its  ordinances,  sharing  in  its  crude  worship — Oh, 
how  crude,  in  many  respects,  how  repulsive,  it  was !  He  could  have 
won  in  no  other  way.  Nor  can  we.  Even  if  we  were  more  sure  than 
the  surest  of  us  can  be  of  our  denominational  contentions,  we 
could  not  make  them  a  good  ground  for  separatism.  Indeed, 
the  more  certain  we  are  of  our  position,  the  more  readily  can 
we  afford  to  occupy  every  inch  of  common  standing  ground  in 
sight.  This  is  not  lapsing  into  Protestantism,  but  rising  to  the 
full  stature  of  Catholicity.  If  we  have  the  truth,  it  will  abide 
secure  and  win  the  day ;  if  not,  happy  shall  we  be  to  lose  that 
which  appears  to  be  what  it  is  not. 

But  I  do  not  believe  that  all  is  done  when,  after  poring  over 
our  books,  we  come  together  and  find  an  intellectual  basis  of 
agreement  in  Melbourne  or  Shanghai.  Actual  sharing  with  one 
another  of  our  good  things  as  far  as  conscience  permits  will  do 
more  than  anything  else  to  advance  God's  truth  and  unite  us 


358  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

according  to  His  purpose.  It  is  not  merely  that  others  are  lack- 
ing in  privileges  possessed  by  us  which  we  can  lay  at  their  dis- 
posal, but  also  that  they  have  that  which  we  have  not  and  where- 
with they  can  enrich  us. —  (The  Churchman,  February  29,  1908.) 

The  missionary  motive  embodies  this  ideal  of  trustful  fellow- 
ship, of  confidence  without  suspicion,  of  brotherly  service  with- 
out selfish  ends.  It  is  the  family  spirit,  and  when  that  is  with 
us  the  family  name  is  near. 

(c)  It  is  showing  that  the  supreme  method  of  dealing  with 
differences  is  not  adaptation  or  absorption,  but  transcendence. 
We  do  not  stay  on  the  level  of  our  disagreements  and  seek  by 
modification,  by  surrender,  or  supplement  to  fit  them  together. 
We  simply  rise  to  a  higher  level,  into  a  unity  which  comprehends 
in  its  completeness  all  our  half-lights  and  fragments.  Our  the- 
ologies are  all  to  be  reconciled  at  last,  not  by  a  restatement 
which  will  balance  them  afresh  and  establish  a  universal  com- 
promise and  equipoise.  They  are  to  be  reconciled  in  God.  The 
living  God  will  unify  them  and  supplant  them.  And  so  with 
all  our  disagreements  as  Christians.  We  shall  not  need  to  com- 
pose them.  As  we  move  upward  into  our  true  air  each  man 
will  be  the  most  eager  of  all  to  lay  aside  his  error,  and  in  the 
larger  knowledge  and  the  larger  love  we  shall  find  our  lost 
unity  in  our  freshly  discovered  God.  It  is  no  enmity  to  our 
past  to  believe  that  it  did  not  exhaust  God.  There  is  no  dis- 
loyalty to  the  past  in  believing  that  God  means  the  future  to 
be  better  than  it.  Unless  the  past  has  made  ready  for  a  better 
future,  the  past  was  a  bad  past.  Only  those  things  are  good 
that  make  ready  for  better  things  to  come  after  them,  and  those 
men  are  disloyal  to  the  past,  not  who  believe  that  it  made 
preparation  for  greater  things,  but  who  believe  that  all  the  great 
things  are  in  a  golden  age  gone  by.  The  worst  disloyalty  to 
the  past  is  to  mistake  it  for  the  future.  Very  great  and  glorious 
the  past  has  been,  but  the  past  will  have  failed  to  teach  its 
lesson  to  us,  the  past  will  have  failed  to  fulfil  its  mission  in 
the  will  of  God  if  it  binds  men  forever  in  the  chains  of  its 
institutional  forms,  if  it  has  not  made  them  ready  for  larger 
and  completer  things  and  led  them  on  to  such  a  unity  as  Christ 


MISSIONS  AND  UNITY  359 

Himself,  we  must  believe,  longed  for  while  He  was  here,  and 
waits  for  now  where  He  is  gone. 

(d)  And  fourthly,  the  missionary  movement  is  guiding  us 
toward  union  at  home  by  the  principle  of  nationalism.  Its  ideal 
on  the  mission  field  is  the  creation  of  indigenous  national 
Churches,  deadened  by  no  throttling  laws  of  uniformity,  free 
and  varied  as  the  spirit  of  man,  but  still  unified,  corporate, 
animated  by  one  organic  life,  fulfilling  one  great  mission,  and 
inspiring  and  answering  the  national  life  and  destiny  of  the 
people.  If  that  is  the  right  ideal  for  Japan  or  India,  it  is  the 
right  ideal  for  Scotland  or  the  United  States.  It  is  the  ideal 
toward  which  the  people  of  Canada  are  working,  and  which  they 
seem  not  unlikely  to  realise  in  our  own  day.  The  very  ideal 
of  missions  involves  union  and  suggests  the  road  to  us  at  home. 

It  is  by  this  principle  of  nationalism  that  we  may  hope  at 
last  to  meet  the  greatest  of  all  problems  in  the  way  of  Christian 
union  at  home  and  the  yet  unsolved  problem  of  mission  comity 
abroad — the  problem,  at  which  I  hinted  in  the  earlier  part  of 
this  lecture,  of  the  Church  of  Rome.  That  Church  has  either 
ignored  or  spurned  every  effort  at  fellowship  in  prayer  or  co- 
operation in  work  or  aspiration  after  unity  in  the  body  of  Christ. 
The  Bishop  of  Lahore  in  1894  declared  what  he  had  found  to  be 
her  invariable  attitude  in  India: 

I  affirm,  with  a  wide  experience  of  North  India  and  Burma, 
that  I  have  never  met  with  a  direct  and  organised  attempt  to 
gather  in  the  heathen  on  the  part  of  that  Church  save  where 
the  seed  had  been  first  sown  by  others,  and  they  had  begun  to 
enter  into  the  fruit  of  their  own  labours.  Instances  of  such 
intervention  on  the  part  of  the  Church  of  Rome  may  be  found 
among  the  Karens  in  Burma,  among  the  Chols  at  Chota  Nagpur, 
in  the  Nadiya  Missions  of  the  Church  Missionary  Society  in 
Bengal,  and  in  the  Missions  of  the  Society  for  the  Propagation 
of  the  Gospel  to  the  south  of  Calcutta.  No  modus  vivendi  is 
possible  as  between  herself  and  other  communions. 

She  has  refused  to  take  part  in  missionary  conferences  or  to 
recognise  as  brethren  other  missionaries,  and  for  her,  principles 
of  missionary  comity  do  not  exist.    And  her  principle  of  unity 


360  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

is  the  exclusiveness  of  an  institution,  not  the  comprehension  of 
the  life  of  Christ.  When  in  1864  the  Roman  Catholic  Bishops 
in  England  asked  for  the  judgment  of  the  Inquisition  at  Rome 
on  the  question  of  the  membership  of  Roman  Catholics  in  the 
Association  for  the  Promotion  of  the  Unity  of  Christendom, 
which  was  made  up  of  Anglicans  and  Romanists,  Cardinal  Pa- 
trizi  replied  for  the  Inquisition  with  regard  to  the  association : 

The  principle  upon  which  it  rests  is  one  that  overthrows  the 
divine  constitution  of  the  Church.  For  it  is  pervaded  by  the 
idea  that  the  true  Church  of  Jesus  Christ  consists  partly  of 
the  Roman  Catholic  Church  spread  abroad  and  projected  through- 
out the  world,  partly  of  the  Photian  schism  and  the  Anglican 
heresy  as  having  equally  with  the  Roman  Church  one  Lord,  one 
faith,  and  one  baptism.  .  .  .  The  Catholic  Church  offers  prayers 
to  Almighty  God  and  urges  the  faithful  in  Christ  to  pray  that 
all  who  have  left  the  Holy  Roman  Church,  out  of  which  is  no 
salvation,  may  abjure  their  errors  and  be  brought  to  the  true 
faith  and  the  peace  of  that  Church,  nay,  that  all  men  may  by 
God's  merciful  aid  attain  to  a  knowledge  of  the  truth.  But  that 
the  faithful  in  Christ  and  that  ecclesiastics  should  pray  for  Chris- 
tian unity  under  the  direction  of  heretics,  and  worse  still,  accord- 
ing to  an  institution  stained  and  infected  by  heresy  in  a  high 
degree,  can  no  way  be  tolerated.  .  .  .  The  most  anxious  care, 
then,  is  to  be  exercised  that  no  Catholic  may  be  deluded  either 
by  appearance  of  piety  or  by  unsound  opinions  to  join  or  in 
any  way  to  favour  the  society  in  question  or  any  similar  one : 
that  they  may  not  be  carried  away  by  a  delusive  yearning  for 
such  newfangled  Christian  unity  into  a  fall  from  that  perfect 
unity  which,  by  a  wonderful  gift  of  divine  grace,  stands  on 
the  firm  foundation  of  Peter. — (Quoted  in  Walsh,  "  Secret  His- 
tory of  Oxford  Movement,"  p.  223,  London,  1899,  pop.  edition, 
from  official  Roman  Catholic  translation  in  Synod's  Diocese  of 
Suthwarcensis,  London,  1868,  pp.  186-190.) 

And  not  only  has  the  Church  of  Rome  thus  far  repudiated 
our  principles  of  missionary  comity  and  rejected  our  ideals  of 
Christianity,  but  in  great  sections  of  the  world  like  South 
America  she  has  created  for  us  some  of  our  heaviest  missionary 
responsibilities.  Here  is  a  continent  where  for  more  than  three 
centuries  the  Church  of  Rome  held  absolute  sway.  '  She  was 
the  one  Church.    The  governments  were  under  her  control.    The 


MISSIONS  AND  UNITY  361 

immigration  was  all  from  her  own  Churches  in  Europe.  The 
education  of  the  people  was  entirely  in  her  hands.  No  Church 
ever  in  any  land  wielded  an  influence  more  complete  or  abso- 
lute. What  are  the  conditions  to-day?  The  men  of  South 
America  have  no  religion.  They  are  enrolled  in  the  census  as 
Catholics,  but  they  neither  attend  church  nor  believe  in  Chris- 
tianity. The  great  majority  of  the  people  are  illiterate.  The 
priesthood  is  either  ignored  or  feared  or  despised.  The  churches 
have  their  occasional  crowds  on  feast  days,  but  for  the  most  part 
are  either  closed  or  empty.  A  priest  in  the  Argentine  told  me 
sadly  that  the  conditions  made  his  heart  sore.  In  his  parish  of 
130,000  souls  not  eight  per  cent.,  he  said,  ever  attended  church. 
Priests  were  so  reviled  that  his  order  had  asked  to  be  allowed 
to  lay  aside  clerical  dress  in  order  to  avoid  insult  and  to  get 
at  the  people.  The  great  masses  of  the  people  had  no  religion, 
and  the  Church  was  neither  educating  the  children  nor  evange- 
lising their  parents.  I  asked  him,  for  he  was  a  true  and  an 
honest  man,  and  a  Christian,  whether  he  saw  any  reason  why  the 
Protestant  Churches  should  not  be  dealing  with  the  enormous 
problems  of  South  America  side  by  side  with  good  men  in  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church,  as  they  were  dealing  with  them  in  North 
America.  He  said  he  saw  none.  His  chief  lament  was  the  po- 
litical connection  of  the  Roman  Church  with  the  Government, 
which  bound  its  spiritual  liberties  and  prevented  it  from  being 
the  national  Church  of  the  people's  life. 

Now,  that  has  been  the  great  historic  error  of  the  Church 
of  Rome,  the  politicalisation  of  the  Church.  She  has  confused 
this  ideal  in  each  nation  with  the  ideal  of  nationalism,  and  has 
lost  both  her  own  life  and  the  people's  life.  She  has  been  in- 
capable of  that  comprehension  which  would  make  room  for 
all  the  wealth  of  each  nation's  true  life  within  it.  And  she 
has  held  a  universal  political  conception  of  the  Church,  which 
has  been  at  war  with  the  genius  and  destiny  of  the  separate 
nations.  The  one  hope  for  her,  and  the  hope  of  a  true  basis  of 
union  with  her,  is  in  the  development  of  those  principles  of 
spiritual  freedom  and  of  nationalism  which  lie  within  the  mis- 
sionary ideal,  and  upon  which  unity  is  already  drawing  near. 


362  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

Bishop  Brent  dealt  with  this  hope  in  the  charge  from  which  I 
have  already  quoted : 

My  reference  thus  far  has  been  to  Protestant  Churches,  be- 
cause the  Roman  Catholic  Church  sits  aloof  in  proud  isolation, 
coming  near  the  Protestant  Churches  only  to  strike  them.  / 
labour  for  peace;  but  when  I  speak  to  them  thereof,  they  make 
them  ready  to  battle.  There  is  little  we  can  do  relative  to  Roman 
Catholicism  beyond  a  sincere  endeavour  to  be  fair.  There  are 
two  sides  to  its  character,  which  are  wholly  distinct — the  Curia 
and  the  Church,  the  one  being  political,  the  other  religious.  The 
former  is  to  be  fought;  the  latter,  though  giving  ground  for 
controversy,  is  to  be  recognised  as  a  Christian  ally,  however 
haughty  and  aloof  in  habits.  That  which  is  baneful  in  the 
Church,  exaggerated  ecclesiasticism,  tyranny  over  conscience,  ar- 
rogant dogmatism,  is  chiefly  due  to  the  constant  pressure  of  the 
Curia.  Nor  is  it  as  a  Church  that  we  can  best  fight  the  political 
intrigue  and  pretensions  of  Rome,  but  as  citizens  of  a  nation 
whose  very  existence  is  prophetic  of  Rome's  final  relinquishment 
of  aspiration  to  temporal  power  and  her  lust  of  domination. 
The  Reformation  was  the  proclamation  of  the  divine  character 
of  nationalism  to  the  exclusion  of  no  Christian  nation,  however 
feeble.  The  world  has  only  just  begun  to  feel  the  commanding 
force  of  Christian  national  life.  Slowly  but  surely  it  is  emanci- 
pating the  countries  of  Europe  and  extending  its  influence  even 
to  the  Far  West.  By  the  time  its  work  is  done  Apostolic  Dele- 
gates will  no  longer  struggle  to  parade  as  ambassadors  of  a 
temporal  power  in  worldly  courts.  If  they  survive  at  all  it 
will  be  as  frank-hearted  representatives  of  a  Pope  resolved  to 
play  his  part  as  the  spiritual  leader  of  a  spiritual  Church,  backed 
in  his  purpose  by  a  representative  cardinalate.  It  needs  no  pro- 
phetic gift  to  forecast  the  final  effect  of  Christian  nationalism. 
Christian  nationalism  is  an  agency  of  God  making  for  spiritual 
freedom,  and  is  an  invincible  force  as  ever  in  human  society, 
having  in  it  the  power  of  God's  hand  which  nothing  can  stay. 
The  emancipation  it  begets  is  as  sure  to  come  to  pass  as  the 
rising  of  the  morning  sun,  and  patriotism,  sober  and  whole- 
hearted, on  the  part  of  honest  citizens,  will  greet  the  day.  But 
at  best  it  must  be  slow,  after  the  manner  in  which  God's  mills 
grind. 

And  by  the  principle  of  Christian  nationalism  embodied  in 
the  missionary  ideal  we  may  hope  at  last,  even  though  the  day 
be  long  delayed,  not  only  to  deal  with  the  problem  of  national 


MISSIONS  AND  UNITY  363 

Christian  unity  as  related  to  the  Church  of  Rome,  but  also 
to  realise  the  world  unity  of  the  Church.  As  I  have  said  before, 
it  is  by  the  development  of  national  Churches  embodying  and 
inspiring  and  consecrating  to  God  the  genius  and  destiny  of 
each  nation  that  the  elements  of  a  yet  larger  unity  are  to  be 
prepared.  The  first  is  not  contradictory  of  the  second ;  it  is 
essential  to  it,  as  the  perfection  of  the  state  requires  the  per- 
fection of  the  family  unit,  and  the  family  demands  and  does 
not  exclude  the  richest  individualism.  It  is  out  of  her  perfect 
ministry  to  the  life  of  each  nation  that  the  Church  is  to  be  pre- 
pared to  minister  to  the  life  of  all  humanity,  and  to  achieve  its 
unity. 

And  it  is  of  this  ministry,  expressed  as  yet  between  the 
Christian  and  non-Christian  nations  by  the  missionary  move- 
ment alone,  or  at  least  best,  that  we  come  now  to  speak  at  the 
close  of  these  lectures. 

I  quoted,  in  speaking  of  the  relation  of  the  missions  to  the 
native  Churches  which  it  was  their  aim  to  found,  Professor 
Reinsch's  summary  of  the  modern  growth  of  the  principle  of 
nationalism.  After  the  passage  quoted,  Professor  Reinsch  went 
on  to  point  out  the  dangers  which  lie  in  this  principle: 

The  nationalistic  principle  bears  within  it  the  possible  source 
of  its  own  destruction,  and  unless  carefully  guarded  against 
exaggeration,  will  of  itself  lead  to  a  disturbance  of  the  equilibrium 
upon  which  the  diversity  of  our  civilisation  depends.  Within 
the  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth  century,  nationalism  has  been 
thus  exaggerated ;  going  beyond  a  healthy  desire  to  express  the 
true  native  characteristic  of  a  people,  it  has  come,  in  some  quar- 
ters, to  mean  the  decrying,  as  barbarous  or  decadent,  of  every- 
thing originating  outside  of  the  national  boundary.  Within  the 
state  itself,  there  is  a  growing  tendency  to  enforce,  by  custom 
and  law,  absolute  uniformity  of  characteristics.  Languages  and 
literatures  peculiar  to  smaller  communities  are  not  encouraged, 
the  effort  being  rather  made  to  replace  them  by  the  national 
language.  In  international  politics  the  motives  of  foreign  nations 
are  being  constantly  misunderstood.  Each  nation  looks  upon 
itself  as  the  bearer  of  the  only  true  civilisation.  France  makes 
wars  as  a  herald  of  progress ;  and  when  Germany  is  victorious, 
she,  in  turn,  announces  a  triumph  for  civilisation.     Even  in  art 


364  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

and  science,  perhaps  the  most  cosmopolitan  of  all  pursuits,  this 
nationalising  tendency  has  left  its  mark.  In  order  to  give  to 
a  work  of  art  a  national  tinge,  idiosyncrasies  are  emphasised, 
while  the  broad,  human  way  of  looking  at  things,  the  art  that 
speaks  to  all  ages,  is  neglected.  Historical  writers  are  especially 
prone  to  yield  to  national  prejudices,  and  even  scientists  may 
be  found  who  import  the  "  national  equation  "  into  their  work. 
Chauvinism  is  not  confined  to  politics.  It  is  to  be  found  in  con- 
temporary art  and  science  as  well. 

There  has  been  a  complete  change  of  ideals  during  the  past 
hundred  years.  The  century  opened  with  a  broad  humanitarian- 
ism,  with  a  belief  in  the  saving  power  of  general  culture,  and 
the  main  characteristic  of  the  time  was  a  nationalistic  optimism 
which  saw  in  reason  the  guiding  influence  in  human  affairs.  This 
age  of  reason,  of  which  Kant,  Jefferson,  the  Humboldts,  and 
Rousseau  are  the  most  prominent  and  distinctive  exponents,  was 
followed  by  what  may  be  called  the  age  of  force.  Napoleon's  ca- 
reer destroyed  much  of  the  first  optimism  of  the  Revolution ;  but 
it  was  the  period  of  1848  that  finally  disappointed  the  hopes  with 
which  the  century  had  begun.  An  age  of  pessimism  then  dawned, 
in  which  it  was  recognised  that  humanity  is  swayed,  not  so  much 
by  reason,  as  by  the  blind  and  passionate  forces  of  the  will. 
Schopenhauer's  great  work,  which  had  laid  unknown  on  the  pub- 
lishers' shelves  for  thirty  years,  now  suddenly  attracted  wide- 
spread attention  and  became  the  mirror  of  the  times.  It  is  only 
within  the  last  decade  that  this  pessimism  has  been  in  turn 
replaced  by  a  new  optimism,  the  optimism  of  force,  which  sees 
in  triumphant  energy  the  sole  condition  of  happy  existence.  The 
serenely  quiet  and  completely  harmonious  balance  of  an  existence 
such  as  Goethe's,  reflected  in  his  whole  art,  has  given  way  to 
a  rush  of  wild  spirits  that  fight  their  way  through  storms  of 
passions  where  only  the  strongest  will,  the  most  violent  energy, 
can  prevail. 

This  general  character  of  the  age  is  written  plainly  in  the 
records  of  contemporary  political  life.  The  nations,  having 
passed  through  their  historical  evolution,  stand  now,  with  fully 
developed  individualities,  face  to  face.  Their  competition  in  all 
the  fields  of  human  activity  has  taken  on  tremendous  dimensions. 
On  the  same  overwhelming  scale  as  that  of  their  armaments  for 
war  do  they  now  exert  their  energies  in  all  directions.  It  is 
true  that  in  this  way  they  develop  greater  vitality  and  ability 
than  could  ever  be  brought  about  in  a  condition  of  world  peace ; 
but  their  rivalry  may  become  suicidal. —  (Reinsch,  "World 
Politics,"  pp.  6-8.) 


MISSIONS  AND  UNITY  365 

Nationalism,  instead  of  preparing  for  the  development  of 
human  unity,  may  prove  its  destruction.  There  are  many  in 
both  the  East  and  the  West  who  put  an  interpretation  upon  it 
which  is  inconsistent  with  world  unity.  In  the  year  1895,  when 
relations  between  Great  Britain  and  America  were  shadowed 
by  the  difficulty  over  the  Venezuelan  boundary  question,  at  the 
English  service  on  Christmas  morning  at  the  American  mission 
Church  in  Teheran,  Persia,  the  customary  prayer  for  the  Queen 
and  the  President  "  that  they  may  vanquish  and  overcome  all 
their  enemies,"  was  omitted,  and  a  prayer  for  peace  substituted. 
An  English  officer  present  was  much  impressed,  and  wrote  an 
ingenious  prayer  in  the  form  of  a  sonnet,  referring  to  the  inci- 
dent, and  closing  with  the  lines: 

Two  mightiest  nations,  may  we  sheathe  the  sword 

That  our  great  destiny  be  not  refused, 
The  common  faith  we  hold  from  common  birth, 

To  spread  Thy  glory  and  to  rule  Thine  earth. 

If  that  be  deemed  a  flight  of  poetical  fancy,  as  much  cannot 
be  said  of  Edward  Dicey's  plain  statement  in  the  Nineteenth 
Century,  September,  1899,  in  an  article  on  "  Peace  and  War  in 
South  Africa  " : 

"  In  every  part  of  the  world  where  British  interests  are  at 
stake,  I  am  in  favour  of  advancing  and  upholding  these  interests, 
even  at  the  cost  of  annexation  and  at  the  risk  of  war.  The  only 
qualification  I  admit,  is  that  the  country  we  desire  to  annex 
or  take  under  our  protection,  the  claims  we  choose  to  assert, 
and  the  cause  we  decide  to  espouse,  should  be  calculated  to 
confer  a  tangible  advantage  upon  the  British  Empire." 

We  should  have  to  go  to  militant  Islam,  it  must  be  said  to 
our  shame,  to  parallel  such  words  in  the  East,  and  militant 
Islam  has  no  longer  any  nationalistic  expression.  The  worst 
that  we  can  find  in  the  East  would  be  an  occasional  irresponsible 
outburst  of  some  Japanese  writer,  or  the  mere  assertion  by 
India  or  China  of  their  desire  to  be  let  alone  to  develop  their 
own  destiny  without  entering  the  human  unity.     Mr.  Dickinson 


366  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

truthfully  puts  this  view  into  the  mouth  of  his  Chinese  official 
of  the  older  order :  "  We  would  not  if  we  could  rival  you,  in 
your  wealth,  your  sciences,  and  your  arts,  if  we  must  do  so 
at  the  cost  of  imitating  your  institutions.  .  .  .  Left  to  our- 
selves, we  should  never  have  sought  intercourse  with  the  West. 
We  have  no  motive  to  do  so.  .  .  .  We  are  sufficient  to  our- 
selves. .  .  .  We  do  not  require,  and  we  have  not  sought,  the 
products  of  other  nations.  ...  A  society,  we  conceive,  that 
is  to  be  politically  stable  must  be  economically  independent ; 
and  we  regard  an  extensive  foreign  trade  as  necessarily  a  source 
of  social  demoralisation.  .  .  ." — ("Letters  of  a  Chinese  Offi- 
cial," pp.  8,  ii,  12.)  To  be  let  alone,  to  let  all  the  world  alone, 
to  keep  China  to  herself,  with  no  service  from  the  world,  with 
no  service  of  the  world — that  was  the  Chinese  ideal.  And 
there  is  a  modern  Hindu  nationalism  which,  while  nobler  than 
our  world-conquering  or  China's  world-excluding  selfishness,  is 
yet  essentially  antagonistic  to  the  spirit  of  world  unity.  It  is 
that  nationalism  which,  while  pretending  the  contrary,  really 
sets  the  nationalistic  form  of  truth  above  the  truth,  which  seeks 
to  lift  a  nation  out  of  its  prejudices  by  appealing  to  them, 
which  assumes  to  find  in  the  very  national  life  that  is  to  be 
reformed  that  power  of  reform  whose  absence  has  made  the 
reform  necessary.  "  In  Hinduism,"  said  Mrs.  Besant,  rising 
"  amidst  deafening  cheers,"  in  her  address  at  the  inaugural 
meeting  of  the  Hindu  Association  in  1903,  "  in  Hinduism  India 
was  born,  and  if  Hinduism  be  disregarded,  India  will  perish. 
You  will  find  in  the  Indian  Scriptures  all  that  you  really  need 
for  the  building  up  of  your  national  edifice."  In  a  sense,  this 
is  saying  no  more  than  we  in  the  West  would  say  of  our  re- 
ligion, but  the  note  of  this  type  of  Indian  nationalism  is  national- 
istic, and  nothing  more;  the  spirit  of  the  world  unity  is  wanting 
in  it. 

And  not  only  are  our  nationalisms  in  danger  of  lacking  or 
denying  the  spirit  of  the  world  unity,  but  in  the  past  hundred 
years  our  nations  of  the  West  have  so  acted  as  to  edge  the 
racial  divisions  with  bitterness  and  distrust.  We  have  looked 
down  upon  the  non-Christian  peoples,  and  have  treated  them 


MISSIONS  AND  UNITY  367 

with  overbearing  contempt.  We  have  forgotten  "  that  scorn 
breeds  scorn  and  abiding  resentment,"  and  that  what  Living- 
stone held  of  the  negro  is  true  of  all  men,  that  it  is  not  safe 
to  disregard  the  manhood  of  any  people.  (Wells,  "  Life  of 
James  Stewart,"  p.  282.)  Our  national  relations  with  the  non- 
Christian  nations  have  been  marked  by  a  sense  and  assertion 
of  our  racial  superiority.  And  it  is  necessary  to  add  that  it 
is  not  possible  to  separate  our  national  relationships  from  the 
effects  of  personal  contempt  and  injustice.  Let  me  cite  three 
illustrative  instances.  The  first  is  from  a  letter  from  a  friend 
in  India: 

You  refer  to  the  "  lawlessness "  abroad  in  the  land.  Let 
me  tell  you  how  some  people  account  for  this.  A  friend  with 
whom  I  was  speaking  of  these  things  told  me  that  she  had 
requested  a  well-known  native  Christian  gentleman  to  tell  her 
his  ideas  with  regard  to  the  unrest  in  India.  He  replied  that  he 
was  a  Christian  and  loved  his  teachers,  but  he  would  relate  a 
little  incident  from  his  own  experience  which  might  throw  light 
on  the  causes  of  unrest  among  the  native  people  of  India.  He 
was  taking  a  stroll  with  two  thoroughly  educated  and  well-known 
Indian  Christian  ladies  (one  of  them  was  Ramabai),  when  a 
British  official  passed  them  on  horseback.  They  paid  no  atten- 
tion to  him  as  he  was  a  stranger.  The  official  immediately  turned 
back  with  his  whip  raised  and  demanded  they  they  do  obeisance. 
The  Indian  gentleman  stared  at  him,  but  the  ladies  bowed.  Not 
satisfied  with  this  he  repeated  his  demand.  Again  the  gentleman 
stared  and  the  ladies  bowed.  The  official  was  probably  afraid 
to  pursue  the  matter  further  and  passed  on  his  way.  Another 
reason  this  gentleman  assigned  for  the  unrest  is  the  holding  of 
native  life  so  cheap;  Europeans  not  sufficiently  punished  for 
causing  grievous  hurt  or  even  death  to  natives.  Now,  I  am  loyal 
to  the  British  Government  in  India.  For  nearly  forty  years 
I  have  lived  under  British  rule,  and  I  have  known  more  or  less 
intimately  a  great  many  British  officials.  One  who  occupied 
a  high  position  in  the  service  always  answered  the  salaam  of  the 
poorest  native.  He  was  taken  to  task  for  this  by  a  fellow  official, 
and  gave  the  reply  that  Washington  gave  under  similar  circum- 
stances— "  Am  /  to  be  outdone  in  politeness  by  a  poor  coolie  ?  " 

The  second  is  a  mere  incident  of  mission  work  in  a  hospital 
in  Soochow,  China.     A  poor  woman  who  lived  on  the  bank 


368  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

of  a  canal,  where  she  had  a  tiny  garden,  came  to  the  hospital 
suffering  from  a  painful  affection  of  the  face.  The  woman 
missionary  saw  her  shivering,  as  though  cold,  in  the  waiting- 
room.  When  her  turn  came  she  was  examined,  though  she  was 
evidently  labouring  under  much  excitement.  She  was  advised 
to  remain  for  an  operation,  but  at  once  left  the  hospital  and 
hurried  away.  After  several  visits,  her  excitement  disappeared, 
and  she  entered  the  wards  and  was  cured.  Afterwards  she 
confided  to  the  missionary  that  she  had  been  in  deadly  fear  of 
foreigners.  Men  from  the  settlement  in  Shanghai  had  been 
accustomed  to  come  hunting  to  Soochow,  and  had  tied  up  their 
boats  at  her  little  property  and  ravaged  her  garden,  and  so 
terrified  her  that  she  had  been  accustomed  to  flee  when  she 
saw  them  coming.  She  had  supposed  that  all  foreigners  were 
like  them,  and  it  had  been  hard  for  her  to  conquer  her  fears 
so  far  as  to  come  to  the  hospital.  Now  she  realised  that  there 
were  good  and  bad  foreigners,  just  as  there  were  good  and  bad 
Chinese.  But  there  are  many  who  have  received  no  such  revela- 
tion at  a  mission  hospital  or  elsewhere. 

The  third  is  a  longer  story,  and  I  shall  let  our  friend,  the 
Rev.  Donald  Fraser  of  Livingstonia,  tell  it  without  comment: 

The  following  story  will  show  one  reason  why  African  mis- 
sionaries should  be  ahead  of  commerce  in  the  rapid  development 
of  that  continent.  Other  significant  deductions  may  be  drawn 
from  it. 

After  the  rinderpest  in  South  Africa,  and  the  consequent 
stagnation  of  trade  in  Rhodesia,  a  number  of  men  wandered  up 
to  British  Central  Africa  in  search  of  cattle.  Ignorant  of  the 
hardships  of  the  long  march,  they  were  tempted  on  by  romances 
of  the  abundance  of  cattle  to  be  found  in  Ngoniland  at  ridicu- 
lously low  prices.  The  first  men  who  came  were  daring  young 
Englishmen,  who  had  walked  on  week  after  week  in  search  of 
this  fabled  cattleland,  which  was  ever  fading  into  the  more  re- 
mote interior.  With  an  endurance  through  that  long  journey 
which  was  heroic,  they  had  slept  on  the  ground  at  night,  had 
lived  on  native  food,  and  had  tramped  till  their  boots  were  worn 
away  and  their  clothes  were  in  rags.  They  arrived  at  Ekwendeni 
one  fine  morning,  rough,  tough,  and  battered-looking  men,  unable 
to  speak  a  word  of  any  native  language.     They  had  taken  a 


MISSIONS  AND  UNITY  369 

week  to  do  a  two  days'  march.  Their  carriers  had  imposed  on 
them,  had  made  them  pay  five  times  the  usual  wage,  and  had 
refused  to  go  any  farther,  when  they  were  only  a  few  miles 
from  our  station,  unless  an  increase  of  pay  was  promised.  They 
had  pretended  weariness,  sickness,  hunger,  anything  that  would 
make  the  Englishmen  buy  goats  and  other  luxuries  for  them  to 
eat.  The  traders  stayed  in  my  house  for  a  week  or  two.  Strong, 
alert,  high-toned  men  they  were,  making  this  daring  venture, — 
one  that  he  might  soon  have  a  home  for  his  wife;  the  other  that 
he  might  return  to  his  mother  in  England.  These  first-comers 
bought  about  two  hundred  cattle  with  their  hundred  pounds. 
But  only  one  arrived  back  in  Umtali.  The  hardships  of  the 
way  killed  the  younger  and  stronger  of  the  two.  But  the  news 
of  the  possibility  of  getting  quantities  of  cattle  at  about  ten 
shillings  a  head,  and  selling  again  at  ten  pounds,  soon  brought 
a  flood  of  adventurers  into  the  country.  The  prices  began  to 
leap  up.  At  last  all  the  surplus  cattle  were  bought,  and  the 
natives,  surfeited  with  calico  and  beads,  refused  to  sell  more. 

When  matters  had  reached  this  stage,  a  young  man,  a  native 

of  Natal,   whose  name  was  Z ,   came   into   the  country  to 

buy  for  the  North  Charterland  Exploration  Company.  He  was 
disappointed  to  find  that  the  people  were  unwilling  to  part  with 
their  stock,  and  that  those  who  were  ready  to  sell  demanded 
four  and  six  times  the  price  he  expected.  So  he  began  to  force 
the  sales.  He  took  possession  of  about  forty  old  guns  which 
he  found  in  a  native  village.  These,  and  others  he  had  brought 
with  him,  he  distributed  among  his  followers,  and  then  marched 
through  the  country,  emptying  some  of  the  kraals  of  their  cattle, 
and  giving  in  return  a  nominal  payment,  or  nothing  at  all. 

Rumours  of  this  high-handed  proceeding  were  coming  to  me 
from  time  to  time ;  but  at  first  I  paid  no  attention  to  them,  think- 
ing they  were  merely  native  exaggerations.  At  last  complaints 
began  to  flow  in  daily ;  so  I  sent  a  note  to  some  of  my  senior 
teachers  asking  them  to  go  to  the  affected  district,  and  investi- 
gate the  truth  of  these  reports.  Next  day  a  group  of  teachers 
and  other  lads  came  running  into  the  station,  breathless,  and 
some  of  them  bleeding  from  wounds.  They  soon  told  their 
story.  Daniel,  the  eldest  son  of  the  Ngoni  chief  whose  war- 
party  had  met  Livingstone  at  the  lake,  had  gone  along  with  some 
other  lads  to  make  inquiries.  After  having  heard  many  a  story 
of  robbery,  he  determined  to  remonstrate  with  the  white  man 
himself.  This  was  his  mistake.  For,  knowing  well  the  strong 
feeling  that  Europeans  have  against  any  interference  from  a 
black  man,  I  had  only  asked  Daniel  to  find  out  from  the  natives 


370  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

whether  the  stories  were  true.  But,  acting  on  his  own  sugges- 
tion, he  and  several  of  his  friends  went  to  speak  with  the  white 
man.  Taking  off  his  hat,  and  sitting  down  before  him,  Daniel 
began  by  saying :  "  Why  do  you  go  through  our  country  taking 

cattle  you  have  not  paid  for?"    Z replied:  "  Who  sent  you 

to  speak  to  me?" 

"  My  master  sent  me,"  answered  David. 

"  Then,"  said  Z ,  "  tell  your  master  to  come  here  if  he 

has  anything  to  say."  And  he  drew  his  sjambok  and  lashed 
Daniel  with  it.  The  other  lads  leaped  up,  angry  at  the  unpro- 
voked insult,  and,  seizing  their  sticks,  struck  at  Z .     He  then 

whipped  out  his  revolver  and  emptied  it  among  the  natives. 
They  fled  in  all  directions;  but  he  climbed  an  ant-hill,  and  fired 
shot  after  shot  with  his  repeating  rifle  after  the  runners.  The 
servants  of  the  white  man  also  gave  chase,  and  with  clubs  and 
axes  left  their  marks  on  the  terrified  men. 

When  I  heard  this  story  I  wrote  a  letter  to  the  nearest  Gov- 
ernment collector,  and  sent  off  some  of  the  boys  to  the  lake 
with  it,  urging  them  to  travel  night  and  day.  That  evening 
there  was  a  good  deal  of  excitement  among  the  people.  But 
it  rose  higher  when  runners  came  in  to  report  that  some  men 

were  missing,  and  were  thought  to  be  killed,  and  that  Z had 

fled  during  the  night,  taking  all  the  cattle  with  him.  My  teachers 
also  sent  notes  to  say  that  the  chief  and  his  warriors  were  going 

out  to  follow  after  Z and  punish  him.     I   forthwith  sent 

off  other  messengers  to  the  lake,  calling  on  the  collector  to  come 
as  quickly  as  possible,  and  telling  him  that  I  might  not  be  able 
to  prevent  the  army  from  doing  harm  to  the  white  man.  At 
the  same  time  I  sent  word  to  the  chief  and  to  the  teachers  urging 
them  to  use  all  their  influence  to  keep  the  people  quiet  until  the 
collector  should  arrive. 

Next  day  I  heard  that  a  few  lads,  armed  with  clubs,  had 

started  after  Z to  recover  their  cattle.    They  had  come  upon 

about  sixty  head  in  charge  of  some  of  Z 's  followers ;  but 

these  men,  on  seeing  the  pursuers,  had  cast  away  their  loads, 
deserted  the  drove,  and  fled.  But  no  blows  had  been  struck. 
The  teachers  of  the  district  told  the  lads  to  put  all  these  cattle 
together  into  a  village  kraal,  and  forbade  the  owners  to  claim 
them  until  they  should  receive  instructions  from  me.  They  also 
gathered  together  the  boxes  of  gin,  and  other  articles  which  had 
been  thrown  away,  and  did  not  allow  any  one  to  touch  them. 

Later  in  the  evening  the  chief  sent  in  runners  to  say  that 
some  of  his  people,  who  were  hoeing  in  a  garden,  had  been  shot 
dead,  and  that  he  was  no  longer  able  to  keep  his  warriors  from 


MISSIONS  AND  UNITY  371 

going  out  to  punish  the  trader.  That  night  I  sent  back  messen- 
gers to  the  chief  and  senior  teachers  telling  them  that  on  no 
account  must  the  army  go  out ;  that  the  trader  was  probably 
a  British  subject  and  must  not  be  harmed;  and  that  on  Monday 
morning  early,  if  the  collector  had  not  arrived,  I  should  go  out 
myself  to  the  disturbed  district. 

Through  these  anxious  days  I  had  been  alone,  with  no  other 
white  man  in  the  country,  and  I  could  not  leave  the  station.  But  on 
Saturday,  to  my  relief,  Mr.  Murray  arrived  from  the  institution. 
Leaving  him  in  charge,  I  started  out  for  the  chief's  kraal.  But 
we  had  not  gone  many  miles  when  a  native  came  running  and 
shouting  after  us  to  say  that  Dr.  Scott  had  arrived  from  Bandwe. 
I  was  glad  to  have  his  company.  I  had  sent  word  to  Bandwe 
to  all  my  fellow-missionaries  of  the  disturbance,  and,  knowing 
that  I  was  alone,  Dr.  Scott,  with  great  kindness,  had  started 
off  immediately,  and  had  come  on,  in  spite  of  rain,  to  be  with  me. 
The  two  of  us  then  went  out  together.  We  had  waited  for  six 
days  for  an  answer  from  the  collector,  but  none  had  come. 
We  started  out  between  three  and  four  in  the  morning,  and 
hurried  over  the  twenty  or  thirty  miles  as  quickly  as  we  could. 
As  we  went  along  the  path  the  people  came  out  to  us  with  tales 
of  their  wrongs,  and  demanded  with  vehemence  the  punishment 
of  the  white  man.     An  old  man,  bent  and  blind  with  his  ninety 

years,  was  carried  to  the  side  of  the  path.     He  told  how  Z 's 

men  had  entered  his  village,  had  taken  all  his  cattle,  outraged 
the  women  in  the  village,  and  after  stripping  him  of  his  little 
trinkets,  had  whipped  him  and  knocked  him  down. 

When  we  arrived  at  the  chief's  head  village,  we  found  about 
two  thousand  men  waiting  for  us  in  the  kraal.  We  sat  down, 
and  the  chief  called  on  some  of  his  people  to  tell  their  stories. 
They  rose  one  after  another,  showing  wounds  from  bullets  and 
clubs,  and  the  long  cuttings  of  the  lash  on  their  backs ;  women 
and  girls  were  there  who  had  been  outraged ;  and  headmen  told 
how  their  cattle,  sheep,  and  goats  had  been  seized,  and  their 
people  murdered. 

Then  when  all  had  finished,  the  chief  rose  and  spoke.  He 
asked  why  they  had  not  been  allowed  to  pursue  and  kill  the  raider. 
Were  they  to  understand  that  our  Queen  allowed  her  subjects 
to  come  into  a  friendly  country,  and  commit  these  atrocities,  with- 
out his  having  power  of  redress?  And  now  the  criminal  was 
leaving  their  country  with  hundreds  of  their  cattle,  sheep,  and 
goats,  and  we  would  not  allow  them  to  arrest  their  own  property. 

I  replied  that  as  the  trader  was  probably  a  British  subject, 
serious  complications  would  follow  if  they  did  him  harm;  that 


372  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

I  had  sent  runners  to  the  nearest  collector,  but  no  answer  had 
been  received.  I  could  only  explain  this  silence  by  surmising 
that  he  recognised  that  the  Ngoni  were  still  an  independent 
people,  and  were  outside  his  sphere  of  jurisdiction.  But  they 
must  not  think  that  our  Queen  approved  of  such  raiding  by 
white  men;  that  she  stands  for  justice  and  for  peace.  Then  I 
suggested  that  as  the  collector  had  not  come,  and  as  the  cattle 
would  soon  be  out  of  their  country  and  beyond  their  control, 
a  company  of  fighting  men  should  go  out  in  the  morning  and 
stop  the  cattle,  and  that  Dr.  Scott  and  I  would  go  with  them, 
on  certain  conditions — namely,  that  we  choose  the  warriors ;  that 
we  alone  have  dealings  with  the  white  man,  for  they  were  not 
going  to  fight,  but  to  ask  him  to  come  back  to  settle  the  dispute 
in  open  court;  and  that  no  beer  should  be  drunk  on  the  way  to 
inflame  their  passions.     These  conditions  were  at  once  granted. 

Next  morning  the  regiments  gathered.  They  dashed  up  to 
the  kraal  gate,  some  of  them  adorned  with  wild  feather  head- 
dress, and  all  fully  armed  with  spears  and  shields  and  old  muzzle- 
loading  guns.  Before  they  had  gathered,  however,  a  messenger 
arrived  from  Mr.  Murray,  to  say  that  the  collector  was  at 
Ekwendeni  and  would  start  in  the  morning  for  the  chief's  kraal. 
We  sent  out  a  special  lot  of  carriers  to  meet  him  and  bring 
him  on  with  all  speed.  When  he  arrived  he  explained  that  he 
had  been  delayed  by  the  rain.  The  chief  and  his  people  gathered 
together  on  the  following  morning,  and  again  went  over  their 
tale  of  woe.  And  the  collector,  through  his  interpreter,  made 
a  strong  speech  to  the  people  denouncing  such  filibustering,  and 
asked  for  a  company  of  warriors  to  go  out  with  him  and  his 

police  to  pursue  Z 's  party.    That  afternoon  they  started  off, 

and  with  easier  minds  Dr.  Scott  and  I  returned  home,  leaving 
the  whole  affair  in  the  hands  of  the  collector.  It  is  a  rule  of 
our  mission  that  we  should  not  interfere  with  civil  matters,  and 
beyond  expounding  what  we  believe  to  be  the  laws  of  justice 
and  peace,  we  leave  the  administration  of  them  to  the  proper 
native  and  European  authorities. 

After  a  few  days  the  collector  returned  without  his  captive. 

Z had  a  week's  start  of  his  pursuers,  and  was  out  of  the 

country  long  before  they  reached  its  borders.     The  new  telegraph 

line  was  set  a-working  for  Z 's  arrest.     But  he  had  taken 

the  bull  by  the  horns,  and  had  lodged  a  complaint  against  us 
at  the  first  Government  station  he  had  come  to.  He  told  how 
Ngoniland  was  in  a  state  of  great  unrest,  and  required  immediate 
pacification  by  British  arms ;  how  the  missionary  had  sent  out 
an  impi  to  attack  him,  and  they  had  seized  a  great  number  of 


MISSIONS  AND  UNITY  373 

his  cattle,  boxes  of  gin,  and  other  things ;  how  he  had  been 
wounded  on  the  head  and  body,  and  had  barely  escaped  with 
his  life.  Where  he  told  it  his  story  was  accepted  as  truth.  The 
Central  Africa  Government,  however,  began  to  investigate  the 

whole  affair,  and  a  few  months  after  Z was  brought  back 

to  Ekwendeni  for  trial  before  the  sub-commissioner,  Captain 
Pearce.  Mr.  Knipe,  the  collector  whose  kindly  manner  quickly 
won  the  confidence  of  the  people,  prosecuted  on  behalf  of  the 
Queen.  The  prisoner  was  charged  with  nine  serious  crimes,  and 
was  found  guilty  of  eight  of  them.  A  pleasing  feature  of  the 
trial  was  that  not  a  single  misstatement  or  contradiction  was 
made  by  the  Ngoni  witnesses,  in  spite  of  all  the  cross-examina- 
tion.    It  was  far  otherwise  with  the  native  servants  of  Z 

who  came  to  give  evidence  in  his  favour.    One  of  our  teachers, 

in  telling  his  story,  said  that  at  first  he  thought  Z 's  men  were 

askari — that  is,  Government  police.  "  What  made  you  think 
that?"  the  commissioner  sharply  asked. 

"  Because  they  were  lifting  cattle  without  paying  for  them," 
the  witness  naively  replied.  There  was  a  laugh  in  the  court  at 
this  unconscious  sarcasm. 

The  Judge  summed  up  in  a  long  and  able  speech,  in  which 

he  censured  Z in  the  strongest  language.     He  found  him 

guilty  of  leading  an  armed  party  through  a  country  friendly 
to  her  Majesty,  and  that  his  party  had  seized  cattle,  had  out- 
raged, wounded,  and  killed  the  natives.  He  was  then  sentenced 
to  pay  a  fine  of  fifty  pounds,  was  bound  over  to  keep  the  peace 
in  a  recognisance  of  twenty-five  pounds,  with  a  bond  of  one 
hundred  pounds,  and  was  made  to  pay  thirty  shillings  com- 
pensation to  the  nearest  relative  of  each  one  who  had  been  killed, 
as  well  as  compensation  to  those  natives  who  had  been  assaulted, 
outraged,  and  robbed.  The  man  was  subsequently  expelled  from 
the  country  for  the  repetition  of  his  crimes. 

The  effect  of  his  trial  was  to  greatly  increase  the  feeling 
among  the  natives  that  the  British  Government  is  there  for  their 
protection,  and  that  the  whiteness  of  a  criminal's  skin  will  not 
save  him  from  punishment. 

But  when  Z left  the  court  with  his  friend,  a  gold  pros- 
pector, their  remark  to  one  another  was :  "  These  missionaries 
are  a  curse  to  the  country.  They  are  spoiling  it  for  other  white 
men." — (The  Christian  Express,  June  i,  1901.) 

Such  tales,  thank  God,  do  not  tell  the  whole  story  of  our 
relation  to  the  non-Christian  peoples.     There  have  been  many 


374  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

noble  and  true  men  who  have  lived  among  these  peoples  and 
represented  there  the  ideals  of  justice  and  righteousness,  but 
the  problem  of  unity  has  been  made  tenfold  more  difficult  by 
the  spirit  of  wrong  and  racial  pride  which  these  three  tales 
illustrate,  and  which  has  marked  in  one  degree  and  another 
much  of  our  contact  with  the  other  peoples.  "  The  conduct  of 
most  foreigners,  the  missionary  excepted,"  said  Mr.  John  W. 
Foster  with  temperate  self-restraint,  "  in  their  intercourse  with 
the  natives  (of  China),  has  been  truthfully  described  as  master- 
ful, high-handed,  and  generally  overbearing,"  and  he  quoted 
General  Gordon's  words,  forty  years  ago,  that  the  Chinese  "  have 
suffered  much  wrong  from  foreigners,  who  have  preyed  on  their 
country." 

And  not  only  by  misconstruction  of  the  nationalistic  principle 
and  by  individual  insolence  of  race  have  we  made  our  problem 
harder,  but  the  problem  itself  has  almost  resolved  itself  into 
the  necessity  of  justifying,  or,  since  that  cannot  be  done,  of 
atoning  for  the  history  of  our  past  national  dealings  with  the 
non-Christian  peoples.  We  have  taken  their  territory,  we  have 
maltreated  their  immigrants,  we  have  shattered  their  institutions, 
we  have  destroyed  their  industries,  we  have  ridiculed  their  cus- 
toms and  sacred  institutions.  Called  of  God  to  weld  humanity 
into  a  unity,  we  have  done  our  best  to  fill  it  with  misunder- 
standings and  deep-seated  hates.  This  is  the  dark  construction 
of  modern  history.  There  is  also  a  noble  story  of  human 
service  and  national  fair-dealing.  And  back  of  all,  and  over 
all,  a  better  will  has  wrought  and  evil  has  been  shorn  of  its 
full  power,  and  in  spite  of  all,  the  love  of  God  has  been  com- 
pacting the  world's  life,  and  the  end  of  all,  we  hold,  will  be 
the  one  family  of  God. 

In  counteracting  all  that  has  hindered,  and  in  providing  ele- 
ments which  are  essential  to  the  perfecting  of  Christian  national- 
ism and  the  unification  of  mankind,  the  missionary  enterprise 
is  charged  with  the  necessary  and  availing  work. 

i.  First  of  all,  it  is  the  missionary  construction  of  Chris- 
tianity alone  which  proclaims  a  hope  and  use  for  every  race. 
It  affirms  the  dignity  of  each  national  genius  and  destiny,  and 


MISSIONS  AND  UNITY  375 

the  necessity  of  its  contribution  to  the  perfected  family  of  God. 
It  denies  the  validity  of  the  principle  of  racial  separation,  and 
will  not  believe  that  any  fiat  of  the  Almighty  has  closed  the 
door  or  denied  the  power  of  the  endless  life  to  any  race.  It 
takes  issue  absolutely  with  Mr.  Townsend's  view  that  "  some- 
thing radical,  something  unalterable  and  indestructible  divides 
the  Asiatic  from  the  European.  .  .  .  They  are  fenced  off 
from  each  other  by  an  invisible,  impalpable,  but  impassable 
wall." — ("Asia  and  Europe,"  pp.  50,  150.)  That  is  the  fact 
with  which  the  merely  political  construction  of  the  world  con- 
fronts itself.  "  Imperialism,"  as  the  New  York  Post  put  it 
recently,  "  is  all  the  while  being  brought  up  short  with  these 
mortifying  inconsistencies.  It  professes  to  be  going  forward 
with  a  policy  of  all-embracing  justice.  Freedom  and  self-gov- 
ernment it  cannot  promise,  but  fair  and  equal  treatment  it  does. 
Yet  it  finds  that  the  ugly  prejudice  of  race  and  colour  is  ever 
and  again  nullifying  its  fine  words.  There  is  no  magic  in  the 
word  imperial  to  make  men  abandon  greed  and  deal  with  a 
fellow-being  as  an  equal  before  the  law  and  in  the  sight  of  God. 
And  whether  we  call  ourselves  imperialist  or  parochial,  there 
is  not  much  for  it  but  to  get  it  into  our  heads  and  our  hearts 
that  it  is  infinitely  mean  to  despise  a  man,  and  refuse  to  give 
him  a  fair  chance,  merely  because  he  is  poor  or  black."  But 
that  word  belongs  to  Christianity  and  to  the  missionary  con- 
struction of  Christianity.  Without  it  our  political  problem  is 
hopeless,  the  problem  merely  of  truce  among  foes,  the  accept- 
ance of  a  perpetual  estrangement  in  humanity.  The  missionary 
enterprise  gives  us  the  exactly  opposite  principle. 

2.  In  the  development  of  a  true  nationalism  and  of  friendly 
racial  relations  the  missionary  agency  is  as  Mr.  Reed,  the  United 
States  Minister  to  China,  wrote  to  the  Secretary  of  State  in 
1858,  a  great  conserving  and  conciliating  influence.  "  Having 
no  enthusiasm  on  the  subject,"  wrote  Mr.  Reed,  "  I  am  bound 
to  say  that  I  consider  the  missionary  element  in  China  a  great 
conservative  and  protecting  principle.  It  is  the  only  barrier 
between  the  unhesitating  advance  of  commercial  adventure  and 
the  not  incongruous  element  of  Chinese  imbecile  corruption." 


376  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

The  service  of  the  missionary  enterprise  in  this  regard  is  varied 
and  it  is  indispensable  to  the  neighborliness  of  mankind.  The 
missionaries  make  the  East  and  West,  the  North  and  South, 
acquainted  with  one  another.  "  The  greatest  agency  to-day  in 
keeping  us  advised  of  the  conditions  among  Oriental  races," 
said  President  Taft  in  a  recent  address,  "  is  the  establishment 
of  foreign  missions." — (Address  at  Founders'  Day  Exercises, 
University  of  Pennsylvania,  Philadelphia,  February  22,  1909.) 
All  other  agencies  combined  do  not  do  as  much  to  introduce  the 
West  to  the  Oriental  races.  The  missionaries  bind  the  peoples 
in  friendliness.  They  draw  after  them  the  love  of  millions  in 
the  lands  from  which  they  come,  and  it  is  their  business  to 
win  the  friendship  of  those  to  whom  they  go.  There  they 
become  centres  of  good-will  and  kindly  feeling.  What  one  of 
the  oldest  of  their  number,  Dr.  William  Ashmore,  has  said  of 
his  associates  in  China  is  true  the  world  over: 

The  Missionary  himself  is  a  very  numerous  personage. 
Taken  men  and  women  together  there  are  about  twenty-six 
hundred  of  him  in  China.  Then  all  speak  the  language,  many 
of  them  with  very  great  fluency.  In  addition  to  their  knowledge 
of  the  language  is  their  even  more  important  knowledge  of  the 
people  themselves,  of  their  local  usages  and  customs,  and  of 
their  ways  of  reasoning  and  of  looking  at  things — quite  abreast 
of  the  native  himself,  some  of  them.  They  know  yamen  usages 
and  all  the  innumerable  ins  and  outs  of  the  whole  social  ma- 
chinery. These  Chinese-speaking  men  and  women  are  scattered 
all  over  the  Empire,  in  every  one  of  the  provinces — some  one 
or  more  of  them  in  almost  every  great  city.  They  live  among 
the  people,  and  are  in  close  contact  with  them  every  day — with 
common  people,  with  merchants,  with  the  respectable  gentry  of 
the  city  and,  to  some  extent,  with  the  officials.  It  is  the  business 
of  these  persons  to  conciliate  people.  That  is  what  they  are 
there  for.  They  seek  to  do  it  to  the  utmost  of  their  ability, 
and  the  majority  of  them  display  some  tact  in  the  matter;  they 
start  schools  and  they  open  hospitals ;  they  dispense  medicines ; 
they  are  in  the  market  and  in  the  shops,  and  along  the  highway, 
and  talking  with  people,  making  acquaintances  and  making 
friends — friends  not  only  for  themselves,  but  for  their  country- 
men far  away  whom  the  town  people  have  never  seen,  but  about 
whom  they  have  heard  that  they  are  ogres  and  devils.     These 


MISSIONS  AND  UNITY  377 

missionaries  show  that  it  is  not  so,  for  these  missionaries  are 
cultured  people  and  have  good  manners,  and  understand  pro- 
priety. They  are  not  rude  and  rough  in  their  treatment  of  their 
servants,  and  they  pay  all  their  debts,  and  have  warm  friends 
among  the  shopkeepers,  who  commend  them  for  their  fair  dealing. 
An  acquired  reputation  like  this  is  worth  something  to  the 
entire  foreign  community  in  China,  and  is  the  more  highly  to 
be  prized  in  that  it  is  oftentimes  of  slow  acquisition,  and  repre- 
sents a  deal  of  patient  living  down  of  the  bad  reputation  which 
in  the  minds  of  most  country  people  attaches  to  the  Western 
man.  We  have  no  means  of  estimating  the  amount  of  this  kind- 
liness and  softened  estimate  towards  us  as  foreigners  generated 
by  the  missionary  body,  but  we  do  know  that  it  is  very  good. 
One  missionary  family  in  an  inland  town  or  city  will,  in  the 
course  of  a  few  years,  make  hundreds  of  friends,  possibly,  or 
if  not  actual  friends,  people  who  will  be  kindly  disposed  to  him 
and  his  little  children. 

In  time  of  suffering  it  is  they  who  enlist  the  sympathy  of 
the  richer  peoples  and  are  the  almoners  of  their  bounty.  Of 
their  services  in  the  last  great  famine  in  China,  one  of  the 
leading  English  papers  in  Shanghai  remarked :  "  It  must  be 
regarded  as  a  fortunate  circumstance  that  the  famine  commit- 
tees have  been  able  to  enlist  the  services  of  the  local  mission- 
aries in  the  distribution  of  relief.  Their  fitness  for  the  work 
entrusted  to  them,  which  they  have  willingly  undertaken,  no 
one  will  question,  whilst  their  probity  and  conscientious  adminis- 
tration of  the  funds  are  equally  beyond  cavil.  Their  knowledge 
of  the  language  and  customs  of  the  people,  and  their,  generally 
speaking,  friendly  relations  with  them,  constitute  them  the  most 
fitting  instruments  for  the  work."  (The  North  China  Herald, 
March  28,  1907,  editorial,  "  The  Famine.")  Many  mission- 
aries, already  endeared  to  the  people  among  whom  they  worked, 
have  been  enshrined  in  an  almost  religious  reverence  for  such 
sacrificial  service. 

It  would  be  easy  to  multiply  indefinitely  the  evidences  of 
the  work  of  sympathy  and  conciliatory  understanding  wrought 
by  missionaries.  Two  concrete  illustrations  must  suffice.  One 
is  the  case  of  a  missionary  in  China  who,  after  twenty  years 
of  service,  was  returning  home  a  year  ago.     Before  he  left,  two 


378  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

documents  of  appreciation  were  drawn  up  by  the  prefectural  and 
county  mandarins  of  the  neighbourhood  where  he  resided.  The 
prefectural  mandarin  wrote  of  him:  "  During  the  past  few  years, 
whenever  I  have  interviewed  the  gentry  and  scholars,  the 
merchants,  and  the  people  generally,  in  the  country  around,  they 
all  without  exception  have  spoken  of  his  goodness  in  a  most 
spontaneous  fashion.  Those  worn  with  age  or  ruddy  with  youth 
all  tell  the  same  tale.  A  refined  friendship  has  been  cemented 
between  the  missionary  and  myself,  during  the  whole  of  which 
I  have  never  heard  him  utter  an  ungenerous  word,  or  seen  a 
frown  upon  his  face.  We  often  chatted  together  at  considerable 
length,  and  on  each  occasion  there  has  been  the  unconstrained 
outflow  of  thought  and  feeling.  I  have  been  glad,  indeed,  in 
my  wanderings  to  have  met  with  such  a  friend.  And  I  have 
been  even  more  glad  to  note  the  manner  in  which  he  has  aroused 
the  latent  sensibilities  of  the  populace  to  similarity  of  feeling 
and  a  recognition  of  the  essential  unity  of  principles,  so  that  the 
barriers  of  East  and  West  have  been  forgotten,  and  a  valuable 
contribution  has  been  secured  toward  cordial  international  rela- 
tions generally."  And  many  such  words.  To  which  the  county 
mandarin  adds  much  more,  saying,  among  other  things :  "  He 
has  lived  here  for  twenty  years,  and  managed  matters  so  well 
that  there  has  been  no  enmity  between  the  populace  and  the 
Church.  Indeed,  the  whole  prefecture  unites  as  one  in  his 
praises — a  fact  so  well  known  that  I  need  not  relate  it.  He 
has  been  pre-eminent  in  his  proclamation  of  religion,  both  in 
its  details  and  in  its  permeating  principles.  And  he  may  rest 
assured  that,  after  his  return,  his  instruction  and  doctrine  will 
continue  to  progress  more  and  more." 

The  other  illustration  is  the  life  of  Dr.  C.  W.  Forman,  for 
nearly  half  a  century  a  missionary  in  Lahore,  India.  At  his 
death  in  1894  The  Tribune,  a  non-Christian  paper  published  in 
Lahore,  summed  up  the  popular  estimate  of  the  man : 

It  will  be  long  before  Lahoris  forget  the  sweet  and  benign 
face  of  the  great  American  missionary,  who  went  to  his  reward 
on  Monday  last.  They  had  affectionately  styled  him  Baba  For- 
man  (Grandfather  Forman),  and  whenever  he  passed  through 


MISSIONS  AND  UNITY  379 

the  streets  on  his  way  to  the  school  or  one  of  the  preaching 
stations  in  the  city  crowds  of  boys  would  follow  him  with  cries 
of  "  Baba  Forman !  "  and  sometimes,  surrounding  him,  pull  his 
sleeves  and  coat-tails  and  beg  for  more  tracts  with  coloured  il- 
lustrations. It  is  only  a  few  months  ago  we  met  him  one  evening 
near  Rang  Mahal  coming  toward  Lohari  Gate.  It  had  rained 
hard  the  whole  day  and  the  pavement  was  ankle-deep  in  mud. 
The  narrow  thoroughfare,  nevertheless,  was  crowded  as  ever. 
There  were  the  street  Arabs  playing  in  the  gutters  and  running 
between  people's  legs.  There  were  ladies  painfully  slipping  along 
rather  than  walking  (on  account  of  their  inconvenient  slippers) 
through  the  jostling  crowd.  There  were  the  usual  assortment 
of  pariah  dogs,  Brahminy  bulls,  hawkers  of  sweets,  business  men, 
loafers,  faquirs,  roughs,  students,  clerks,  etc.  Our  attention  was 
drawn  to  an  end  of  the  street  from  where  a  knot  of  boys  was 
slowly  advancing.  When  sufficiently  near  we  observed  it  was 
the  venerable  Padri  attended  by  his  usual  escort. 

No  one  seeing  him  for  the  first  time  failed  to  be  struck  with 
his  magnificent  presence.  He  was  over  rather  than  below  six  feet 
in  height  and  proportionately  broad.  A  snow-white  beard  sweep- 
ing a  broad,  manly  chest,  a  large  Roman  nose,  small  laughing 
bluish  grey  eyes,  cliff-like  brows  surmounted  by  a  broad  expan- 
sive forehead,  polished  as  marble,  made  up  a  face  which  a  sculptor 
would  unhesitatingly  accept  as  a  model  for  the  head  of  an 
earnest  teacher.  Half  of  our  educated  young  men  have  been 
brought  up  in  his  school.  Almost  all  Lahoris  of  the  batch,  which 
has  just  retired  or  is  retiring  from  service,  had  received  their 
education  under  his  supervision,  consequently  there  are  few 
sufaidposh  people  in  Lahore  who  were  not  personally  acquainted 
with  him.  And  the  good  missionary  did  not  pass  the  most  in- 
significant among  them  without  stopping  to  enquire  as  to  how 
they  were  doing,  whether  anything  troubled  them,  etc.  We  doubt 
whether  any  other  man,  European  or  Indian,  has  taken  as  great 
a  part  in  the  making  of  the  Punjab  of  to-day  as  Dr.  Forman.  A 
history  of  his  educational  work  would  be  almost  the  educational 
history  of  the  Province.  He  came  to  this  city  in  1848  as  a  mis- 
sionary of  the  American  Presbyterian  Church.  Happily  for 
us,  while  passing  through  Lower  Bengal  on  his  way  to  Upper 
India,  he  had  observed  the  brilliant  results  achieved  by  Dr.  Duff 
and  his  devoted  colleagues,  and  he  resolved  in  his  mind  to  carry 
the  Gospel  to  the  people  through  the  medium  of  English  educa- 
tion. Arriving  at  Ludhiana,  he  received  valuable  hints  and  guid- 
ance from  the  late  Dr.  Newton,  whose  daughter  he  afterwards 
married.     Reaching  Lahore  he  devoted  all  his  mighty  energies 


380  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

to  bring  the  torch  of  knowledge  to  the  people  who  were  steeped 
in  superstition  and  dense  ignorance.  He  had  to  fight  against 
appalling  difficulties,  and  one  by  one  removed  all.  The  authorities 
did  not  look  with  favour  on  his  efforts.  The  parents  of  boys 
thought  they  were  conferring  a  great  favour  on  him  by  sending 
the  youngsters  to  him.  He  had  to  give  scholarships  to  most  of 
his  pupils  as  an  inducement  to  them  to  stay  in  his  school.  It 
was  by  such  means  that  he  made  education  popular  here.  Look- 
ing round  his  assembled  pupils,  over  one  thousand  in  number  at 
morning  prayer  time,  he  used  often  to  remark  that  he  had  begun 
with  one  and  had  been  delighted  once  on  having  six  together. 
So  long  ago  as  early  in  the  sixties  he  had  opened  college  classes 
in  his  school  with  a  strong  staff  of  professors. 

Afterwards  he  had  reluctantly  to  close  the  college,  but  only 
for  a  few  years.  He  established  more  than  a  dozen  of  branch 
schools  in  all  parts  of  the  city  for  the  teaching  of  children.  For 
the  benefit  of  workmen  and  others,  who  could  not  afford  to  read 
in  the  daytime,  he  started  a  night  school,  which  was  formerly 
known  as  the  Mission  Adult  School.  There  are  hundreds  who 
owe  their  rise  in  life  to  that  school.  The  night  school  is  flourish- 
ing and  doing  its  blessed  work.  Most  of  his  time  and  attention 
was  given  to  educational  work.  But  he  was  not  at  all  remiss 
in  his  preaching  duties.  In  every  weather,  in  every  season,  he 
was  never  absent  from  his  post  in  the  Lohari  Gate  or  Delhi  Gate 
Chapels,  or  Lohari  Mandi  and  Hira  Mandi  preaching  stations. 
To  his  flock  of  the  mission  compound  he  was  as  a  father.  He 
was  far  from  a  good  orator,  but  he  was  very  effective  as  a 
preacher.  Whatever  he  said  came  direct  from  the  heart  and 
went  direct  to  the  heart  of  his  listener.  Though  he  is  no  longer 
working  in  the  flesh  in  our  midst,  the  spirit  of  his  work  will 
beckon  us  onward.  His  memory  will  long  be  a  "  pillar  of  light  " 
to  our  people. 

The  funeral  took  place  on  Thursday  afternoon.  The  body 
was  brought  down  from  Kasauli  and  reached  Lahore  Station 
by  about  3  p.m.  There  was  a  strong  muster  of  pupils,  friends, 
and  admirers  of  the  deceased  missionary  on  the  platform.  A 
solemn  silence  fell  on  the  gathering  as  the  train  arrived.  The 
large  box  containing  the  mortal  remains  was  reverently  lifted 
up  by  some  students  of  the  Mission  School  and  others,  and 
carried  up  to  the  bungalow  in  the  Mission  compound  close  by, 
which  Dr.  Forman  had  occupied  for  over  forty  years.  Thence 
the  body  was  placed  in  a  coffin  and  taken  to  the  Mission  Church, 
where  touching  funeral  orations  were  delivered.  Among  others, 
the  venerable  Lala  Chandu  Lai  spoke  feelingly  of  the  great  work 


MISSIONS  AND  UNITY  381 

done  by  the  padri.  Then  a  procession  was  formed  and  all 
proceeded  through  the  city  to  the  Protestant  Cemetery.  The 
Rev.  Henry  Forman  and  the  Rev.  John  Forman,  two  sons  of 
Dr.  Forman,  were  the  chief  mourners.  Not  less  than  three  thou- 
sand persons  of  all  classes  and  creeds  followed  the  hearse.  Pun- 
dit Prem  Nath,  Examiner,  Public  Works  Department ;  Pundit 
Amar  Nath,  retired  Extra  Assistant  Commissioner ;  Babu  Gunda 
Mai,  and  many  other  old  pupils  of  Dr.  Forman  were  visibly 
moved.  In  the  city  hundreds  joined  the  solemn  procession.  All 
differences  of  creed  and  colour  seemed  to  be  forgotten  for  the 
moment,  and  all  united  to  do  honour  to  the  memory  of  the  pious 
deceased.  When  the  coffin  was  lowered  into  the  grave  there 
were  few  dry  eyes  in  the  vast  throng.  The  hearse  and  coffin  were 
covered  with  wreaths  of  flowers,  which  were  placed  upon  them 
by  Hindus,  Mussulmans,  and  Christians  alike. 

A  public  meeting  of  the  pupils,  friends,  and  admirers  of  Dr. 
Forman  was  held  in  the  Rang  Mahal  yesterday  evening.  Pundit 
Prem  Nath,  Examiner,  Public  Works  Department,  occupied  the 
chair.  Several  impressive  speeches  were  delivered  expressing  the 
sense  of  the  loss  sustained  by  the  community  by  the  death  of  the 
veteran  educationist  and  preacher  of  the  Gospel.  Several  pro- 
posals were  adopted  for  keeping  his  memory  green  in  the  Punjab. 
Another  great  meeting  will  be  held  on  Sunday. 

These  are  not  isolated  and  exceptional  cases.  The  mission- 
ary enterprise  everywhere  is  itself  only  when  it  is  a  movement 
of  good-will  and  friendship.  It  is  in  this  that  the  secret  of 
its  power  to  promote  peace  and  order  resides — a  power  greater, 
where  it  is  allowed  to  work,  than  any  other  power  the  West 
possesses.  "  I  have  relied,"  said  Sir  Peregrine  Maitland,  Gov- 
ernor of  Cape  Colony,  "  more  upon  the  labours  of  missionaries 
for  the  peaceful  government  of  the  natives  than  upon  the  pres- 
ence of  British  troops."  "  For  the  preservation  of  peace  be- 
tween the  colonists  and  natives,"  said  General  Sir  Charles  War- 
ren, Governor  of  Natal,  "  one  missionary  is  worth  a  battalion 
of  soldiers."  "  In  my  judgment,"  said  Sir  Augustus  Rivers 
Thompson,  Lieutenant-Governor  of  Bengal,  "  Christian  mission- 
aries have  done  more  real  and  lasting  good  to  the  people  of 
India  than  all  other  agencies  combined.  They  have  been  the 
salt  of  the  country  and  the  true  saviours  of  the  empire." 

No  small  part  of  the  conserving  work  the  missionary  has 


382  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

done  has  been  to  war  against  the  hateful  forces  which  are 
destructive  of  racial  as  well  as  individual  character,  and  thus 
to  save  national  character  and  its  power  to  fulfil  its  mission. 
It  was  the  missionary  movement  that  checked  the  annihilating 
traffic  in  liquor  in  Africa  and  the  South  Seas,  and  stopped  the 
slave  trade.  What  success  in  the  anti-opium  campaign  has 
been  attained,  said  Mr.  Wong  at  the  reception  given  to  the 
members  of  the  International  Opium  Commission  in  Shanghai 
on  February  3,  1909,  was  largely  due  to  missionaries.  In- 
directly, he  thought  the  Commission  would  draw  the  nations 
represented  closer  together,  as  nothing  drew  peoples  together 
more  than  united  action  for  a  righteous  cause.  And  of  the 
service  of  the  missionary  movement  in  saving  a  whole  race,  a 
competent  witness  has  borne  testimony :  "  The  Esquimaux 
are  all  Christians,"  said  Dr.  Grenfell  of  Labrador.  "  The 
Moravian  missionaries  converted  them  long  ago.  In  general 
morality,  I  should  say,  that  they  rank  higher  than  most  Christian 
communities.  Christianity  is  a  saving  influence  with  them;  but 
for  it  I  am  sure  that  they  would  have  been  extinct  long  ago 
from  the  vices  which  follow  trade."  It  may  be  said  that  such 
a  preservation  is  trivial,  that  these  marginal  races  have  no  con- 
tribution to  make  to  the  united  life  of  the  family  of  God.  The 
Christian  view  is  different,  but  even  so,  if  we  are  to  let  these 
indifferent  races  alone,  it  must  be  on  fair  terms.  If  they  are 
to  be  denied  our  Gospel,  they  must  be  spared  also  our  lusts 
and  the  diseases  which  we  have  never  hesitated  to  propagate 
throughout  the  world. 

But  it  has  been  not  only  among  the  feeble  peoples  and  in 
the  destruction  of  the  predatory  forces  of  the  West  that  the 
missionary  enterprise  has  made  its  contribution.  It  has  been 
doing  all  over  the  world  the  solid  work  at  the  base  of  the  new 
civilisation.  Mr.  McKinley  bore  witness  to  this  in  one  of  his 
last  addresses: 


I  am  glad  of  the  opportunity  to  offer  without  stint  my  tribute 
of  praise  and  respect  to  the  missionary  effort,  which  has  wrought 
such   wonderful   triumphs    for   civilisation.     The   story  of   the 


MISSIONS  AND  UNITY  383 

Christian  Missions  is  one  of  thrilling  interest  and  marvellous 
results.  The  services  and  the  sacrifices  of  the  missionaries  for 
their  fellow-men  constitute  one  of  the  most  glorious  pages  of 
the  world's  history.  The  missionary,  of  whatever  Church  or 
ecclesiastical  body,  who  devotes  his  life  to  the  service  of  the 
Master  and  of  men,  carrying  the  torch  of  truth  and  enlightenment, 
deserves  the  gratitude,  the  support,  and  the  homage  of  mankind. 
The  noble,  self-effacing,  willing  ministers  of  peace  and  good- 
will should  be  classed  with  the  world's  heroes. 

They  count  their  labour  no  sacrifice.  "  Away  with  the  word 
in  such  a  view  and  with  such  a  thought,"  says  David  Livingstone ; 
"  it  is  emphatically  no  sacrifice ;  say,  rather,  it  is  a  privilege." 
They  furnish  us  examples  of  forbearance,  fortitude,  of  patience, 
and  unyielding  purpose,  and  of  spirit  which  triumphs  not  by  the 
force  of  might,  but  by  the  persuasive  majesty  of  right. 

Who  can  estimate  their  value  to  the  progress  of  nations? 
Their  contribution  to  the  onward  and  upward  march  of  humanity 
is  beyond  all  calculation.  They  have  inculcated  industry  and 
taught  the  various  trades.  They  have  prompted  concord  and 
amity,  and  brought  nations  and  races  closer  together.  They  have 
made  men  better.  They  have  increased  the  regard  for  home ; 
have  strengthened  the  sacred  ties  of  family ;  have  made  the  com- 
munity well-ordered,  and  their  work  has  been  a  potent  influence 
in  the  development  of  law  and  the  establishment  of  government. — 
(Report  of  Ecumenical  Conference  on  Foreign  Missions,  Vol.  I, 
P-  39  f) 

And  one  who  through  tragic  experiences  came  to  know 
the  missionary  and  his  mission  well,  the  late  American  Minister 
to  China,  Mr.  Conger,  in  an  address  not  long  before  his  death, 
bore  his  authoritative  testimony : 

For  seven  years  I  was  most  intimately  associated  with  the 
American  missionaries  in  China,  and  I  take  genuine  pleasure  and 
pride  in  certifying  to  all  the  world,  and  particularly  to  those 
who  support  and  stand  behind  them,  that  they  are  a  body  of  men 
and  women  who,  measured  by  the  good  they  do,  by  the  sacrifices 
they  make,  the  trials  they  endure,  and  the  risks  they  take,  are 
veritable  heroes,  whose  absolutely  unselfish  devotion  to  humanity 
is  surpassed  nowhere  on  the  face  of  the  earth.  They  are  the 
pioneers  in  all  that  land.  They  are  invariably  the  forerunners 
and  forebears  of  all  that  is  best  in  Western  civilisation.  It  is 
they  who,  armed  only  with  the  Bible  and  with  school-books,  and 


384  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

sustained  by  a  faith  which  gives  them  unflinching  courage,  have 
penetrated  into  the  darkest  interior  of  that  great  Chinese  Empire, 
hitherto  unvisited  by  foreigners,  and  blazed  the  way  for  the  on- 
coming commerce  which  everywhere  has  quickly  followed  them. 
It  was  they  who  first  planted  the  banner  of  the  Prince  of  Peace 
in  every  place  where  now  floats  the  flag  of  commerce  and  trade. 
The  dim  pathways  which  they  traced,  often  marking  them  with 
their  life's  blood,  are  being  rapidly  transformed  into  great  high- 
ways of  travel  and  trade,  and  are  fast  becoming  lined  with 
chapels,  schoolhouses,  and  railway  stations,  where  heretofore 
were  found  only  idolatrous  shrines  and  lodging  places  for  wheel- 
barrow-men and  pack  mules. — (The  Spirit  of  Missions,  Novem- 
ber, 1906.) 

In  these  and  deeper  ways  the  missionary  movement  has  been 
a  great  constructive  and  conciliatory  power. 

3.  In  the  third  place,  Christianity  in  the  missionary  enter- 
prise introduces  the  new  principles  from  without  which  are 
not  found  in  the  non-Christian  nations,  and  without  which  they 
cannot  take  their  true  place  or  fulfil  their  missions,  or  be  ready 
for  human  unity.  The  non-Christian  nations  are  realising  that 
they  do  not  have  these  principles  and  must  find  them.  Some 
seek  them  in  a  reinterpretation  of  their  ancient  oracles ;  some 
in  the  secular  instructions  of  the  West.  But  the  leaders  know 
that  they  are  wanting  and  must  be  found.  "  It  matters  noth- 
ing," said  the  Gaekwar  of  Baroda,  at  the  Indian  National  Social 
Conference  in  his  inaugural  address  in  1904 ;  "  it  matters  noth- 
ing where  the  truth  comes  from.  If  it  serves  a  national  purpose 
or  helps  national  ends,  then  it  is  national,  whether  the  form  in 
which  we  find  it  is  modern  or  Vedic,  European  or  purely  Indian. 
And  we  must  be  eager  to  find  the  knowledge  and  apply  it, 
whether  it  has  the  sanction  of  the  older  ideas  or  not.  We  have 
to  look  forward  to  the  future  of  India ;  we  are  not  going  to 
revive  the  past.  .  .  .  What  we  need  now  is  action — common- 
sense  practical  measures,  and  not  discussion  as  to  whether  this 
or  that  reform  is  justified  by  older  traditions  or  the  sacred 
writings  of  our  ancestors.  .  .  .  We  must  not  only  accept  knowl- 
edge intellectually,  but  have  the  moral  courage  to  alter  our 
actions  and  customs  in  accordance.     Otherwise,  our  knowledge 


MISSIONS  AND  UNITY  385 

is  of  little  use;  for  the  true  test  of  knowledge  is  its  practical 
utility  in  equipping  the  society  for  the  actual  problems  of  life. 
If  then,  our  customs  put  us  at  a  disadvantage  in  the  struggle 
of  life,  it  is  useless  to  persist  in  them  merely  because  they 
are  our  own  or  old."  Now,  these  new  principles  for  which  the 
nations  are  feeling  have  their  origin  and  their  full  life  only 
in  the  missionary  interpretation  of  Christianity. 

It  alone  fits  men  for  freedom,  by  teaching  them  self-control 
in  liberty,  and  making  them  fearless  followers  of  the  truth  which 
makes  men  free.  These  two  great  gifts  of  the  Gospel — truth 
and  freedom — are  the  needs  of  the  non-Christian  peoples.  On 
his  return  from  his  recent  visit  to  Europe  and  America,  the 
Gaekwar  of  Baroda  pointed  out  their  needs  in  a  notable  address 
to  the  Indian  Industrial  Conference  in  Calcutta :  "  The  most 
frequent  criticism  offered  against  us  as  a  people  by  candid 
critics  is  that  we  are  disunited,  many-minded,  and  incapable  of 
unselfish  co-operation  for  national  ends.  .  .  .  The  atmosphere 
of  the  West  is  throbbing  with  vigorous  mental  life.  The  pur- 
suit of  new  truth  is  the  first  concern  of  every  stalwart  mind  of 
the  West,  while  the  mass  of  our  people  are  content  to  live 
stolid,  conventional  lives,  blindly  following  the  precepts  of  the 
fathers  rather  than  emulating  the  example  they  set  by  intellectual 
independence  and  constructive  energy."  One  of  the  best  friends 
and  truest  servants  India  ever  had,  Sir  Herbert  Edwardes,  told 
her  where  she  could  have  her  needs  met.  "  Till  India  is  leavened 
with  Christianity,"  he  said  in  an  address  on  "  Our  Indian  Em- 
pire "  in  Manchester  in  i860,  "  she  will  be  unfit  for  freedom. 
When  India  is  leavened  with  Christianity  she  will  be  unfit  for 
any  form  of  slavery,  however  mild.  England  may  then  leave 
her,  with  an  overthrown  idolatry  and  a  true  faith  built  up; 
with  developed  resources ;  and  with  an  enlightened  and  awak- 
ened people,  no  longer  isolated  in  the  East,  but  linked  with 
the  civilised  races  of  the  West."  A  modern  student  and  friend 
of  India  has  told  her  the  same  thing,  and  the  principle  which 
he  sets  forth  is  true  of  all  the  true  life  and  true  freedom  of  the 
world.  "  The  one  essential,"  says  Bishop  Lefroy,  "  without 
which  any  hope  of  such  independence  and  larger  national  life 


386  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

appears  an  empty  dream,  is  the  infusion  of  a  spirit  both  of 
unity  and  of  vigorous,  healthy,  new  life,  of  which  as  yet  there 
is  but  the  barest  commencement  in  India,  and  which,  as  I 
believe,  can  be  looked  for  from  nowhere  except  from  the  spread 
of  Christianity  in  the  land." — (Charge  to  Clergy,  November  6, 
1906,  p.  27,.) 

These  nations  need  Christianity  to  fit  men  for  freedom. 
They  need  it  also  to  teach  men  service,  which  is  the  divine  end 
of  freedom.  Until  men  are  unselfish  freedom  is  only  an  en- 
larged opportunity  for  action  hostile  to  human  unity.  And 
Christianity,  uttering  itself  through  one  channel  or  another,  can 
alone  teach  the  nations  this  law  of  ministry,  which  is  a  new 
principle  to  the  non-Christian  peoples.  An  article  in  an  In- 
dian paper,  "The  United  India  and  Native  States"  (November 
14,  1908),  is  a  candid  acknowledgment  of  this: 

This  kind  of  public  spirit  is  entirely  a  Western  product. 
India  has  known  from  time  immemorial  the  virtue  of  charity, 
especially  of  the  pious  kind,  but  public  spirit  is  very  different 
from  charity.  The  underlying  principle  of  public  spirit  is  that 
the  best  and  surest  way  of  raising  the  individual  is  to  raise 
the  society  of  which  he  is  a  member.  Charity,  on  the  other  hand, 
looks  to  the  individual  and  is  not  infrequently  exercised  regard- 
less of  its  effect  on  the  community  as  a  whole.  The  individual- 
istic conception  of  religious  life  in  India  was  not  favourable 
to  the  growth  of  public  spirit.  The  socialistic  conception  of 
Christianity,  to  which  the  West  owes  all  that  is  most  vital  in  its 
civilisation,  may  be  regarded  as  the  parent  of  public  spirit.  Sacri- 
fice as  a  means  of  self-development  is  at  the  root  of  Indian  culture 
and  civilisation.  Protestant  Christianity,  claiming  rightly  or 
wrongly  to  be  the  true  interpreter  of  Christ's  teaching,  has 
definitely  abandoned  sacrifice  in  favour  of  service  as  the  true 
means  of  individual  development.  India  has  not  accepted  Chris- 
tianity, but  it  has  accepted  its  central  doctrine  of  Service  as 
being  of  superior  national  efficacy  to  its  ancient  principle  of 
Sacrifice.  This  momentous  change  has  been  effected  through 
the  medium  of  English  education ;  and  to  the  mind  which  sees 
history  only  as  the  process  of  man's  moral  and  spiritual  evolu- 
tion, the  task  of  England  in  India  would  seem  to  be  finished 
when — and  not  until — the  theoretical  acceptance  of  the  principle 
of  Service  by  the  best  minds  of  the  country  has  found  expression 


MISSIONS  AND  UNITY  387 

in  the  structure  of  its  social  and  national  life.  A  thousand  sedi- 
tious and  anarchical  movements  cannot  hasten  the  arrival  of 
that  time  by  a  single  hour,  a  hundred  thousand  repressive  laws 
will  not  delay  its  advent  by  a  single  minute.  All  these  are  "  but 
trouble  of  ants  in  a  million  of  suns."  Each  race  has  as  its 
appointed  task  the  uplifting  of  another  race  than  itself.  Its 
strength,  its  wisdom,  its  power,  are  all  lent  to  it  for  that  purpose 
and  are  withdrawn  from  it  when  they  cease  to  fulfil  it.  The  rise, 
growth,  and  decay  of  empires  from  this  point  of  view  are  full 
of  practical  lessons  to  mankind.  The  gift  of  England  to  India 
is  the  principle  of  Service,  of  public  spirit,  of  nationalism. 

Furthermore,  it  is  the  missionary  construction  of  Christianity 
which  must  give  the  world  the  principle  of  equality  of  man  and 
woman,  of  man  and  man.  The  non-Christian  principles  of  class 
and  sex  inequality  have  ruled  the  whole  world  except  as  Christ 
has  changed  it.  The  conditions  which  in  one  degree  or  another 
have  prevailed  throughout  the  world,  and  the  protest  which  the 
Christian  spirit  has  awakened  against  them, — for  all  the  protest 
has  come  from  that  spirit, — are  set  forth  by  the  Gaekwar  of 
Baroda,  who  is  not  a  Christian,  in  one  of  the  addresses  from 
which  I  have  already  quoted : 

Let  us  now  examine  our  two  great  problems — caste  and  the 
status  of  women — in  more  detail,  endeavouring  to  understand 
what  they  are  at  present,  what  are  the  defects  which  they  impose 
on  the  society,  and  what  is  the  reality  which  they  conceal  or 
obscure. 

The  evils  of  caste  cover  the  whole  range  of  social  life.  It 
hampers  the  life  of  the  individual  with  a  vast  number  of  petty 
rules  and  observances  which  have  no  meaning.  It  cripples  him 
in  his  relations  with  his  family,  in  his  marriage,  in  the  education 
of  his  children,  and  especially  in  his  life.  It  weakens  the  eco- 
nomic position  by  attempting  to  confine  him  to  particular  trades, 
by  preventing  him  from  learning  the  culture  of  the  West,  and 
by  giving  him  an  exaggerated  view  of  his  knowledge  and  im- 
portance. It  cripples  his  professional  life  by  increasing  distrust, 
treachery,  and  jealousy,  hampering  a  free  use  of  others'  abilities, 
and  ruins  his  social  life  by  increasing  exclusiveness,  restricting 
the  opportunities  of  social  intercourse,  and  preventing  that  in- 
tellectual development  on  which  the  prosperity  of  any  class  most 
depends.     In  the  wider  spheres  of  life,  in  municipal  or  local 


388  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

affairs,  it  destroys  all  hope  of  local  patriotism,  of  work  for  the 
common  good,  by  thrusting  forward  the  interest  of  the  caste  as 
opposed  to  those  of  the  community  and  by  making  combined 
efforts  for  the  common  good  exceedingly  difficult.  But  its  most 
serious  offence  is  its  effect  on  national  life  and  national  unity. 
It  intensifies  local  dissensions  and  diverse  interests,  and  obscures 
great  national  ideals  and  interests,  which  should  be  those  of  every 
caste  and  people,  and  renders  the  country  disunited  and  in- 
capable of  improving  its  defects  or  of  availing  itself  of  the 
advantages  which  it  should  gain  from  contact  with  the  civilisa- 
tion of  the  West.  It  robs  us  of  our  humanity  by  insisting  on 
the  degradation  of  some  of  our  fellow-men  who  are  separated 
from  us  by  no  more  than  accident  of  birth.  It  prevents  the 
noble  and  charitable  impulses  which  have  done  so  much  for  the 
improvement  and  mutual  benefit  of  European  society.  It  pre- 
vents our  making  the  most  of  all  the  various  abilities  of  our 
diverse  communities ;  it  diminishes  all  our  emotional  activities 
and  intellectual  resources.  Again,  it  is  the  most  conservative 
element  in  our  society  and  the  steady  enemy  to  all  reform. 
Every  reformer  who  has  endeavoured  to  secure  the  advance  of 
our  society  has  been  driven  out  of  it  by  the  operation  of  caste. 
By  this  rigidity,  it  preserves  ignorant  superstitions  and  clings 
to  the  past,  while  it  does  nothing  to  make  those  inevitable  changes 
which  nature  is  ever  pressing  on  us  more  easy  and  more  pos- 
sible.  .    .    . 

It  is  not  necessary  for  me  to  dwell  upon  all  those  familiar 
questions  which  cluster  around  the  question  of  the  status  of 
women.  I  would  merely  point  out  that  what  we  may  most 
legitimately  object  against  each  is  that  they  involve  a  bad  economy 
of  social  forces. 

Early  marriage,  especially  now  that  the  checks  on  early  con- 
summation are  breaking  down,  must  increase  death  and  disease 
among  the  mothers,  swell  infant  mortality,  and  injure  the  phy- 
sique of  the  race.  It  interferes,  also,  with  the  proper  education 
of  women. 

A  too  strict  purdah  mutilates  social  life  and  makes  its  current 
dull  and  sluggish  by  excluding  the  brightening  influence  of 
women. 

By  the  denial  of  education  to  women  we  deprive  ourselves 
of  half  the  potential  force  of  the  nation,  deny  to  our  children 
the  advantage  of  having  cultured  mothers,  and  by  stunting  the 
faculties  of  the  mother  affect  injuriously  the  heredity  of  the 
race.  We  create,  moreover,  a  gulf  of  mental  division  in  the 
home,  and  put  a  powerful   drag  on   progress  by   making  the 


MISSIONS  AND  UNITY  389 

women  a  great  conservative  force  that  clings  to  everything  old, 
however  outworn  or  irrational.   .    .    . 

The  existence,  side  by  side,  of  customs  like  polygamy  and 
the  prohibition  of  widow  remarriage  similarly  shows  a  bad  or- 
ganisation of  society.  The  one  keeps  up  an  unduly  low  standard 
of  morality  among  men,  the  other  demands  an  impossibly  high 
standard  from  women.  To  enforce  the  standard  we  suppress 
our  feelings  of  humanity  and  affection  and  inflict  severities  upon 
widows  in  order  to  keep  their  vitality  low  and  make  them  less 
attractive;  yet  the  impossibility  remains,  and  the  laws  of  nature 
we  have  ignored  avenge  themselves ;  for,  in  spite  of  our  harsh 
measures,  we  fail  to  preserve  even  an  ordinary  standard  of 
morality  in  this  much  ill-treated  class. 

We  should,  however,  realise  where  the  evil  lies.  It  is  in  the 
lowering  of  our  ideas  about  women  and  the  relation  of  the 
sexes. —  (Report  of  Indian  National  Social  Conference,  at  Bom- 
bay, 1904.) 

These  are  needs  which  must  come  to  Christianity  for  their 
supply. 

And  one  other  principle  which  the  Christian  ideal  has  to  con- 
tribute from  without  is  the  ideal  of  a  true  nationalism.  "  The 
very  idea  of  nationality  has  come  to  the  educated  mind  of  India 
under  the  auspices  of  Christianity ;  it  has  been  undoubtedly 
quickened  by  the  unconscious  assimilation  of  ideas  and  prin- 
ciples essentially  Christian.  Split  up  hitherto  into  a  number  of 
separate  and  conflicting  races  and  castes,  a  corporate  life  is 
now  beginning  to  stir." — (Slater,  "  Missions  and  Sociology," 
p.  14.)  It  is  Christianity  and  the  Christian  principles  embodied, 
with  whatever  obscuration,  in  British  rule  in  India,  which  have 
created  this  stirring  and  given  it  the  life  of  hope.  And  through- 
out the  world  the  missionary  movement  as  we  have  sought  to  set 
it  forth  has  been  one  of  the  great  educative  ideas,  and  is  the 
true  norm  and  illumination  of  the  Christian  nationalism  which 
is  the  divine  principle  of  the  next  stage  in  the  development  of 
humanity. 

4.  And  Christianity  not  only  introduces  from  without  the 
principles  required  for  the  development  and  unity  of  humanity, 
but  it  presents  in  doing  so  the  only  possible  method  of  achieving 
unity.  It  deals  directly  with  the  individual  and  moves  upon  his 


390  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

personality  and  will,  and  so  rests  the  new  movement  where  alone 
it  can  stably  rest,  upon  the  redeemed  character  of  persons.  "  The 
mightiest  civilising  agencies,"  says  Dr.  Fairbairn,  "  are  persons. 
The  mightiest  civilising  persons  are  Christian  men."  And  it 
appeals  through  the  mind  and  heart  of  the  individual  to  the 
reason  of  the  world.  "If  our  people  are  ever  to  be  moved," 
says  Mr.  Dickinson's  Chinese  official,  "  their  reason  and  their 
heart  must  be  convinced." — ("  Letters  from  a  Chinese  Official," 
p.  42.)  That  is  true  of  all  the  peoples,  and  that  is  the  method, 
and  the  only  method  of  the  missionary  enterprise.  It  is  speak- 
ing to  the  reason  and  the  heart  of  nations.  By  the  purely  per- 
suasive agencies  which  it  uses,  the  voice  of  the  friend,  the  steady 
upheaving  transformation  of  the  school,  the  tenderness  of  sym- 
pathy in  suffering,  by  dissolving  prejudice  and  incarnating  the 
truth  of  human  oneness,  it  is  convincing  the  world's  reason,  even 
when  it  is  unaware,  and  has  already  penetrated  every  nation 
and  permeated  some  with  the  principles  by  which  the  people  are 
to  fulfil  their  separate  destinies  and  attain  their  heavenly  ordered 
unity  at  the  last. 

5.  Yet  once  more,  the  missionary  work  of  Christianity  is 
essential  and  effective  because  it  provides  the  adequate  moral 
basis  which  is  necessary  for  the  life  and  institutions  of  the 
peoples.  All  the  non-Christian  peoples  have  lacked  the  moral 
basis  of  a  national  life.  The  Chinese  have  come  nearest  to  pos- 
sessing it,  and  what  was  strong  in  China's  neighbouring  nations 
was  borrowed  from  the  Chinese,  but  even  there  the  want  of 
what  is  elementary  in  Christianity  deprived  the  Chinese  people 
of  the  central  power  of  a  great  nationality.  As  the  foreigner 
wrote,  who  knew  the  nation  as  well  as  any  foreigner  has  ever 
known  it: 

Even  among  a  people  like  the  Chinese,  who  are  possessed  of 
the  conveniences  of  life  and  held  together  by  an  organised  gov- 
ernment founded  on  the  consent  of  all  classes,  the  want  of  truth 
and  integrity  weakens  every  part  of  the  social  fabric.  Moral 
ethics,  enforcing  the  social  relations,  the  rights  and  duties  of  the 
rulers  and  ruled,  and  the  inculcation  of  the  five  constant  virtues 
have  been  taught  in  China  for  twenty-five  centuries,  and  yet 


MISSIONS  AND  UNITY  391 

have  failed  to  teach  the  people  to  be  truthful.  They  never  can 
do  it,  for  they  have  no  sanctions  calculated  to  influence  the  mind 
and  strengthen  it  to  resist  temptation.  .  .  .  But  until  truth  be- 
comes even  here  the  basis  of  society,  so  that  a  man  sinks  in  the 
estimation  of  his  fellows  if  caught  in  a  falsehood,  and  is  afraid 
to  lie  because  he  will  be  despised,  the  Chinese  must  remain  far 
below  any  Christian  nation.  They  cannot  progress  in  civilisation 
until  they  become  truthful.  No  corporate  bodies  formed  among 
them  for  the  purpose  of  carrying  out  great  plans  of  improve- 
ment can  cohere  in  consequence  of  this  inherent  weakness,  be- 
cause no  subscribers  will  trust  their  money  to  such  a  company. 
No  insurance  company  can  obtain  the  confidence  of  the  com- 
munity ;  no  trust  company  can  succeed,  let  it  promise  ever  so 
much.  If  the  government  issues  coin  it  is  taken  for  its  intrinsic 
worth,  like  bullion,  because  it  is  so  tampered  with  as  to  lose  its 
nominal  value ;  and  the  case  is  still  worse  with  its  bonds, — so 
that  China  alone,  of  all  the  nations  of  the  earth,  has  even  now 
no  national  silver  or  gold  coin,  and  no  bank  bills,  the  only  cur- 
rency being  a  miserable  copper-iron  coin,  so  debased  as  not  to 
pay  counterfeiters  to  imitate  it.  .  .  .  Truth  alone  is  the  proper 
aliment  for  the  mind;  on  it  alone  can  all  the  faculties  acquire 
their  full  development. — (S.  Wells  Williams,  "The  Middle 
Kingdom,"  Vol.  I,  p.  352  ff.) 

And  so  of  every  nation.  Its  deepest  needs  are  the  moral 
needs,  which  must  be  met  before  the  people  can  be  free  to 
fulfil  their  divinely  ordered  ends.  "  It  is  the  moral  sense  of 
the  people  that  has  to  be  elevated,"  says  a  Hindu  writer  of 
his  own  nation.  (Jwala  Dass  in  the  Hindustan  Review.  See 
The  Literary  Digest,  February  15,  1908,  p.  220.)  And  both 
in  the  nation  in  its  needs,  and  among  the  nations  in  their  rela- 
tions, Christianity,  and  Christianity  alone,  can  furnish  the  in- 
dispensable foundation.  It  is  in  Christianity  and  its  principles, 
which  men  cannot  permanently  separate  from  their  historic 
origin  in  it  and  their  organic  connection  with  it,  that  the  moral 
basis  of  true  nationalism  and  of  true  universalism  is  to  be  found. 
"  Upon  her  perpetuation  in  the  civilised  world,"  says  Bishop 
Brent,  speaking  of  the  Christian  Church  in  which  Christianity 
prosecutes  her  central  mission  among  men,  "  depends  the  main- 
tenance of  common  morality,  not  to  mention  moral  refinements, 
the  achievement  of  even  that  moderate  success  in  character- 


392  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  NATIONS 

building  which  marks  the  pathway  of  Christian  history,  that 
buoyancy  of  hope  which  casts  upon  the  harsh  disciplines  of  life 
something  akin  to  transfiguring  radiancy.  Upon  her  extension 
to  every  corner  of  the  world  that  is  ignorant  of  the  truth,  as 
made  known  in  the  good  news  of  the  Saviour's  message,  hinges 
the  consummation  of  God's  beneficent  purposes  for  the  human 
race,  the  full  knowledge  of  Christ's  personality  by  men,  and 
that  unification  of  the  nations  of  the  world  which  has  ever  been 
the  dream  of  philosophers,  the  labour  of  philanthropists,  and  the 
prayer  of  the  saints." 

6.  And  lastly,  the  missionary  movement  embodies  the  one 
supreme  uniting  power.  Within  each  nation  for  the  perfect 
development  of  its  character  and  for  the  faithful  fulfilment  of 
its  mission  there  must  be  some  adequate  unifying  bond.  The 
bond  must  relate  men  in  their  deepest  life,  in  the  foundations 
of  their  principles,  in  the  fountains  of  their  ideals,  in  their 
eternal  hopes.  Only  a  common  religion  can  supply  that  bond. 
"  Any  one  realising  the  importance  attached  to  religion  in  Asia," 
says  Arminius  Vambery,  "  will  easily  understand  how  impossible 
it  is  to  bridge  over  [politically]  the  gulf  which  separates  the 
professors  of  these  various  beliefs  in  India.  Religion  absorbs 
the  interest  of  the  Asiatic ;  it  is  stronger  than  his  feeling  of 
nationality." — ("  Western  Culture  in  Eastern  Lands,"  Ch.  II.) 
When  any  land  is  torn  by  religious  and  racial  division,  as  Dr. 
Ghose  reminded  the  Surat  Section  of  the  Indian  National  Con- 
gress of  1907,  after  the  unhappy  division  of  the  Congress,  it 
cannot  realise  the  unity  of  its  character  or  its  destiny.  It  was 
the  missionary  movement  in  Christianity  which  furnished  the 
Roman  Empire  with  this  essential  bond,  and  in  his  discernment 
of  the  power  and  duty  of  Christianity  thus  to  unite  men,  Pro- 
fessor Ramsay  has  marked  the  supreme  statesmanship  of  St. 
Paul: 

In  the  mind  of  the  ancients  no  union  of  men,  small  or  great, 
good  or  bad,  humble  or  honourable,  was  conceivable  without 
a  religious  bond  to  hold  it  together.  The  Roman  Empire,  if  it 
was  to  become  an  organic  unity,  must  derive  its  vitality  and  its 
hold  on  men's  minds  from  some  religious  bond.     Patriotism,  to 


MISSIONS  AND  UNITY  393 

the  ancients,  was  adherence  to  a  common  religion,  just  as  the 
family  tie  was,  not  common  blood,  but  communion  in  the  family- 
religion  (for  the  adopted  son  was  as  real  a  member  as  the  son 
by  nature).  Accordingly,  when  Augustus  essayed  the  great  task 
of  consolidating  the  loosely  aggregated  parts  of  the  vast  Empire, 
he  had  to  find  a  religion  to  consecrate  the  unity  by  a  common 
idea  and  sentiment.  The  existing  religions  were  all  national, 
while  the  Empire  (as  we  saw)  was  striving  to  extirpate  the 
national  divisions  and  create  a  supra-national  unity.  A  new 
religion  was  needed.  Partly  with  conscious  intention,  partly 
borne  unconsciously  on  the  tide  of  events,  the  young  Empire 
created  the  Imperial  religion,  the  worship  of  an  idea — the  cult 
of  the  Majesty  of  Rome,  as  represented  by  the  incarnate  deity 
present  on  earth  in  the  person  of  the  reigning  Emperor,  and 
by  the  dead  gods,  his  deified  predecessors  on  the  throne.  Except 
for  the  slavish  adulation  of  the  living  Emperor,  the  idea  was  not 
devoid  of  nobility;  but  it  was  incapable  of  life,  for  it  degraded 
human  nature,  and  was  founded  on  a  lie.  But  Paul  gave  the 
Empire  a  more  serviceable  idea.  He  made  possible  that  unity 
at  which  the  imperial  policy  was  aiming.  The  true  path  of  the 
Empire  lay  in  allowing  free  play  to  the  idea  which  Paul  offered, 
and  strengthening  itself  through  this  unifying  religion.  That 
principle  of  perfect  religious  freedom  (which  we  regard  as 
Seneca's)  directed  for  a  time  the  imperial  policy,  and  caused 
the  acquittal  of  Paul  on  his  first  trial  in  Rome.  But  freedom  was 
soon  exchanged  for  the  policy  of  fire  and  sword.  The  imperial 
gods  would  not  give  place  to  a  more  real  religion,  and  fought 
for  two  and  a  half  centuries  to  maintain  their  sham  worship 
against  it.  When  at  last  the  idea  of  Paul  was,  even  reluctantly 
and  imperfectly,  accepted  by  the  Emperors,  no  longer  claiming 
to  be  gods,  it  gave  new  life  to  the  rapidly  perishing  organisation 
of  the  Empire  and  conquered  the  triumphant  barbarian  enemy. 
Had  it  not  been  for  Paul — if  one  may  guess  at  what  might  have 
been — no  man  would  now  remember  the  Roman  and  Greek 
civilisation.  Barbarism  proved  too  powerful  for  the  Graeco- 
Roman  civilisation  unaided  by  the  new  religious  bond ;  and  every 
channel  through  which  that  civilisation  was  preserved,  or  interest 
in  it  maintained,  either  is  now  or  has  been  in  some  essential  part 
of  its  course  Christian  after  the  Pauline  form. — (Ramsay, 
"  Pauline  and  Other  Studies,"  p.  99.) 

The  task  which  St.  Paul  performed  for  the  Roman  Empire 
we  have  now  to  perform  for  the  world,  and  in  a  more  compli- 
cated form,  but  a  form  for  which  Christianity  is  entirely  ade- 


394  CHRISTIANITY.  AND  THE  NATIONS 

quate.  We  have  to  locate  Christianity  in  the  life  of  each  sepa- 
rate nation  for  the  perfection  of  its  national  character  and  the 
accomplishment  of  its  national  destiny,  and  we  have  to  set  it 
in  the  whole  life  of  the  world  so  as  to  bind  into  one  each  per- 
fected nationality  and  to  cement  and  complete  with  its  unity  the 
whole  varied  life  of  mankind.  This  is  the  work  that  must  now 
be  done,  and  which  Christianity  alone  can  do.  The  privilege  of 
it  is  ours  who  believe  that  God  has  made  of  one  blood  all  the 
nations  of  men,  and  has  appointed  to  each  the  bounds  of  its 
habitation  and  the  glory  of  its  own  distinct  mission,  and  has 
also  given  them  in  the  Gospel  of  His  Son  that  common  life  pro- 
vided for  all  mankind,  wherein  there  is  neither  Greek  nor  Jew, 
circumcision  nor  uncircumcision,  barbarian,  Scythian,  bondman 
nor  freeman,  but  Christ  is  all  and  in  all. 


THE  END 


INDEX 


Aberdeen,  Earl  of,  229 

Adams,  John  Quincy,  184 

Africa,  Native  Races  Committee, 
120,   121,  147-149 

Africa,  present  needs  of,  44 

Albany,  Bishop  of,  329 

Ali  Illahees,  302 

American  Journal  of  Theology,  The, 
279 

Amherst,  Lord,  190 

Ancestor  worship,  157 

Anderson,  D.  L.,  263,  264 

Anglican  Bishops  in  India,  encycli- 
cal of,  334;  conference  of,  344 

Arminian  and  Calvinistic  theologies 
commingled,  336,  337 

Armstrong,  General  S.  C,  328,  330 

Arrow  War,  216 

Arya  Samaj,  254,  309,  314 

Asceticism  in  missions,  85-88 

Ashmore,  William,  250,  376 

Ashvagasha,  290 

Awdry,  Bishop,  345 

Banerji,  K.  M.,  164 
Banurji,  Kali  Charan,  140 
Baptism,  place  of,  154-156 
Baptist    Missionary    Review,    The, 

158,  352 
Barber,  on  David  Hill,  82-85 
Baroda,  Gaekwar  of,  384,  385,  387 
Barrows,  John  H.,  284,  295 
Barton,  James  L.,  186,  230,  242 
Basle  Missionary  Society,  166 
Baxter,  William  E.,   186 
Bayard,  Thomas  F.,  205 
Bechuanaland,  189 
Begg,  A.   Paton,  139 
Behaism,  258 

Benson,  Archbishop,  2t,  291,  323,  331 
Bentinck,  Lord  William,  270 
Bergen,    Paul    D.,   224 
Berthollet,  179 
Berthoud,  32 
Besant,  Mrs.  Annie,  246,  273,  366 


Bickersteth,  306 

Blunt,  Scawen,  245 

Boniface,  201,  323 

Booth,  General  William,  97 

Bradford,  A.  H.,  286 

Brahmo  Samaj,  164,  254,  317 

Brent,  Bishop,  189,  355,  362,  391 

Bridgman,  F.  B.,  148,  190 

Brooks,  Phillips,  20,  294,  295 

Brooks,  Wilmot,  207 

Brotherhood  of  Man,  279,  282 

Brown,  A.  J.,  147 

Brown,  Dr.  Alexander,  46 

Brussels  Conference,  189,  193 

Bryce,  the  Hon.  James,  27 

Buddhism,  250,  252,  260,  261,  263, 
267,  268,  273,  278,  281,  282,  283, 
285,  286,  289,  290,  292,  293,  310 

Buddhist,  The,  268 

Calcutta  Missionary  Conference,  138 

Caldwell,   Bishop,   154 

Cape  Town,  Coadjutor  Bishop  of, 
148 

Carey,  34 

Caste,  157-160,  387 

Chalmers,  James,  248 

Chalmers,  Thomas,  23 

Chapman,  George,  340 

Charlton,  I.  W.,  139 

Chatterjee,  313 

China,  railroads,  42;  post  office,  43; 
treaty  with  U.  S.,  204,  216,  225 

China  Centenary  Conference,  96,  97, 
222,  334,  341 

China  Inland  Mission,  212 

China's  Young  Men,  224 

Chinese  Recorder,  The,  135,  289 

Christian  Express,  The,  373 

Christian  Unity,  Edinburgh  Confer- 
ence on,  340;  in  Japan,  340,  345, 
347.  350,  352;  in  China,  341,  347, 
350;  in  India,  351;  in  the  Philip- 
pines, 342,  347 

Christlieb,  Max,  259 


395 


396 


INDEX 


Christlieb,   Professor  Theodor,  330 
Church  a  Missionary  Society,  The, 

23 
Churchman,  The,  235 
Church    Missionary    Society,    The, 

121,   193 
Church  of  Scotland,  23,  193 
Civilization  and  Missions,  35-39,  75, 

107,  185-193 
Clarendon,  Earl  of,  52,  228,  229 
Clark,  H.  Martyn,  298 
Clark,  Robert,  132,  187 
Clarke,  William   Newton,  285,  289, 

291,  307 
Cochran,  Dr.  J.  P.,  270 
Coillard,  147 
Colquhoun,   121 
Columba,  201 
Confucianism,  260,  261,  263,  264,  276, 

278,  282,  293 
Conger,  383 
Congregational  Deputation  to 

China,  219 
Consular  Reports,  American,  35,  36 
Contemporary  Review,  The,  67 
Coolidge,  202,  203 
Cooperation  in  Missions,  348 
Craik,  Sir  Henry,  98 
Cromer,  37 
Cushing,  Caleb,  190 
Cust,  85,  90,  107,  167,  197,  323 

Dana,  Richard  H.,  184 

Dass,  Lall  Bihary,   158,   159 

Datta,  164,  165,  166,  266 

Davis,  J.  C.  B.,  215 

Day,  145 

Denby,  192 

Dennis,  184,  290,  302 

Dharam  Sindhu,  271 

Dhunda,  271 

Dicey,  Edward,  365 

Dickinson's  "  Chinese  Official,"  234, 

365,  366,  390 
Dnyanodaiya,  271 
Drummond,  Henry,  312 
Duff,  Alexander,  77,  98,  145,  342 
Duff,  Grant,  71,  72 
Du  Halde,  181 
Duncan,  "  Rabbi,"  330 
Dwight,  H.  O.,  205,  279 
Dykes,  Oswald,  181 

East  India  Company  and  Missions, 
178 


Ebina,  168 

Education  and  Missions,  91-98;  of 

natives  in  foreign  lands,  167,  168 
Edward,  King,  to  Indian  people,  117 
Edwardes,  Sir  Herbert,  116,  385 
Ellinwood,  F.  F.,  63 
Empire  Review,  The,  193 
Epiphany,  The,  158,  249 
"  Ethiopian    Movement,   The,"    147- 

149 
Evangelization  of  the  World  in  this 

Generation,  41,  76,  77 
Evarts,  Jeremiah,  34 
Evening  Post,  The  New  York,  53, 

256,  375 
Extra-territoriality,  213-215 

Faber,  Ernst,  241,  250,  263,  264,  278 

Fairbairn,  390 

Federation  in  Missions,  349 

Findlay,  347 

Fish,  191,  215 

Forman,  187,  378-381 

Forsythe,  P.  T.,  340 

Fortnightly  Review,  The,  213 

Foss,  Bishop,  of  Japan,  345 

Foster,  John  W.,  184,  185,  188,  191, 

203,  227,  307,  374 
France,  Political   use   of    Missions 

by,  179 
Fraser,  Donald,  368 
French,  187 
Fyson,  Bishop,  333 

Gairdner,  W.  H.  T.,  328 
Germany,  Political  use  of  Missions 

by,    179 
Ghose,  Dr.,  126,  392 
Gibson,  70,  73-75,  220-225,  319 
Glasgow  Peace  Congress,  197,  198 
Good,  Adolphus,  32 
Gordon,  A.  J.,   133 
Gordon,  "  Chinese,"  37,  85,  374 
Gordon,  George  A.,  302,  316 
Gore,  Bishop,  123 
Goreh,  Nehemiah,  164,  253 
Grant,  Principal,  302 
Granville,  Earl,  207 
"  Great    Japan    Buddhists'    Union, 

The,"  252 
Grenfell,  Dr.,  382 
Guizot,  288 

Hall,  Charles  Cuthbert,  254,  295 
Hamlin,  A.  D.  G.,  196 


INDEX 


397 


Hardy,  278 

Harnack,  21,  26,  60,  88,  124,  133,  186, 

300,  301 
Harper's  Weekly,  219 
Harris,  Townsend,  233 
Henderson,  354 
Hewett,  Sir  John,  25 
Hibbert  Journal,  The,  315 
Hill,  David,  82-85,  87,  100 
Hindu  Association,  The,  246 
Hinduism,   246,   247,   249,   253,   260, 

261,  264-266,  270,  276,  278,  282,  286, 

292,  304,  305 
Hornaday,  W.  T.,  48 
Houghton,  Lord,  280 
Houston,  M.  H.,  208,  209,  210 
Hume,  R.  A.,  243,  288 
Hunter,  Sir  William,  53,  155 

Imad-ud-din,  298 

Independent,  The,  286 

India,   sanitation   in,  25;   education 

in,  98 
Indian  Standard,  The,  146 
Indian  Witness,  The,  138,  144,  257 
Inglis,  23,  95 
Ito,  Marquis,  37,  38 
Iwakura  Embassy,  58 

James,  W.  R.,  140 

Japan,  character  of  Church,  161 ; 
Christian  philanthropy  in,  182; 
needs  of,  28,  43 ;  relations  of  mis- 
sions and  native  churches  in,  149- 
152;  religious  toleration  in,  38, 
227,  228,  251  ;  trade  of,  42 

Japan  Mail,  The,  250,  281 

Japan  Times,  The,  151 

Jewson,  A.,  140,   141 

Johnston,  Sir  H.  H,  36 

Jones,  A.  G.,  61,  62,  89 

Jones,  Griffith,  313 

Jotirnibandh,  271 

Jowett,  295 

Judaism  and  Christianity,  295,  296 

Judson,  Adoniram,  18,  80-82,  87,  178 

Jwala  Dass,  391 

Kayastha  Samachar,  252 
Kellogg,  268,  305 
Kelly,  67,  93,  119,  120,  302 
Keshub  Chunder  Sen,  264,  295 
Kirisutokyo  Sekai,  151 
Koelle,   229 


Korea,  missions  in,  134;  nationalis- 
tic hopes  destroyed,  117 
Krishna,  278 
Kyokawai  Jiji,  285 

Lahore,  Bishop  of,  27,  117,  242,  262, 

290,  359.  385 
Lala  Chunder  Lai,  380 
Lambeth  Conference,  336 
Laplace,  297 
Lawes,  248 

Lawrence,  Edward,  154,  306,  308 
Lawrence,  John,  233 
Le  Quesne,  W.  R.,  138 
Lindsay,  45 

Literary  Digest,  The,  259 
Livingstone,  52,  189,  367 
Lloyd,  267,  274,  311 
London,  Bishop  of,  328 
Low,  Frederick,  Jr.,  215 
Lowrie,  Walter,  34,  35 
Lucas,    Bernard,    105-107,    158,    159, 

162 
Lucknow,  Bishop  of,  332 
Lull,  Raymond,  32 

Mahabharata,  278 

Mabie,  Henry  C,  279 

Macartney,  181,  190 

Macaulay,  98,  116,  266 

Mackenzie,  John,  188 

Maclear,  89 

Macleod,  Norman,  331 

Macnicol,  273,  315 

Madras,  Bishop  of,  158,  159 

Madras  Mail,  The,  286 

Maitland,  Sir  Peregrine,  381 

Malcolm,  Napier,  61,  305 

Manu,  Code  of,  282 

Martin,  W.  A.  P.,  192,  289 

Mattoon,   192 

Maxim,  Sir  Hiram,  219 

Mayajima,  187 

Mazumdar,  255,  317,  318 

McKinley,  382 

Mencius,  263 

Meyer,  F.  B.,  130 

Miller,  Dr.,  of  Madras,  64,  94 

Milman.  Hugh,  36 

Milner,  Lord,  on  James  Stewart,  82 

Mohammedanism,  260,  261,  262,  268- 
270,  275,  278,  279,  280,  282,  283, 
287,  290,  292,  298,  305,  310 

Mommsen,  232 

Monier-Williams,  267,  293,  308 


398 


INDEX 


Montgomery,  Bishop,  21,  319 
Mookerjee,  P.  M.,  140,  141 
Moore,  E.  C,  66,  67,  69,  234 
Moravians,  168 
Morrison,  Robert,  65,  216 
Morrison,  Theodore,  116 
Miihlocker,  258 
Muller,  Max,  283,  315 
Mutsuhito,  251 
Mylne,  106,  159,  162,  265 

Nanking,  Synod  of  Central  China  at, 

146 
Napoleon,  113,  297 
Nationalism,  and  Missions,  113  ff., 

361-394;  growth  of,  115,  116,  117 
"  Need  enough  at  home,"  47,  48 
Nevius,  John  L.,  290 
Newcastle,  Bishop  of,  335 
Newton,   187 
Nicene  Council,  40 
Nida-Ye-Vatan,  180 
Nineteenth  Century,  The,  365 
Norman,  Henry,  42 
North  China  Herald,  The,  377 
Nottingham,  Church  Conference  at, 

335 
Nyasaland,  39,  193 

Okuma,  43,  281 
Omar  Khayyam,  283 
"  Oriental  Consciousness,  The,"  314, 
315 

Parker,  190 

Parliament  of  Religions,  The,  257, 
284,  286,  295 

Paton,  John  G.,  189 

Patrizi,  Cardinal,  360 

Paul,  missionary  method  of.  78,  87, 
91,  101,  210;  view  of  heathenism, 
296,   297;    statesmanship   of,   392, 

393 
Paul,  R.  I.,  126 
Perry,  Commodore,  191 
Philanthropy  and  Missions,  98-101 
Pioneer,  The,  155 
Political  rights  of  missionaries,  195- 

212 
Polygamy,  156,  157 
Pottinger,  190 
Prayer  and  Missions,  40,  344,  345, 

346 
Presbyterian  Church  in  the  U.  S.  A., 

23,  79,  92,  122,  143 


Protection  of  native  converts,  215- 

231 
Pundit  Prem  Nath,  381 
Purushatam  Rao  Telang,  246 

Ram  Mohun  Roy,  264 

Ramabai,  367 

Ramsay,  Sir  William  M.,  392 

Ranke,  232 

Reed,  217,  375 

Reference  and  Council,  Committee 

on,  346,  347 
Reinsch,  113-115,  180,  232,  321,  322, 

363 
Rhys-Davids,  267 
Rice,  Dr.,  and  his  Overture,  23 
Richard,  Timothy,  103-105,  290 
Richter,  128 
Robinson,  Alfred,  207 
Roman    Catholic   Church    Missions, 

66,  67,  93,  119-121 ;  and  unity,  355, 

359-362 
"  Ronins,  The  Forty-seven,"  278 
Roosevelt,  Ex-President,  39,  49,  226 
Ross,  John,  144,  181,  211 
Ruskin,  275 

Saint  James  Gazette,  The,  ig7 

Salisbury,  Lord,  199 

Salvation  Army,  87 

Sandwich  Islands,  184,  185 

Sargent,  148 

Sawayama,  166 

Schopenhauer,  245 

Science  of  religion,  258,  259 

Scotland,  Free  Church  Deputation 
to  India,  97 

Scotland,  United  Free  Church,  Mis- 
sions in  Africa,  193 

Scotsman,  The,  256 

Scott,  258,  296-298 

Seeley,  67 

Sekeletu,  Chief  of  Mokololo,  52 

Self-extension    in    native    churches, 

133-135 
Self-government  in  native  churches, 

142  ff. 
Self-support  in  native  churches,  135- 

142 
Seward,  Consul-General,  193 
Seward,  Secretary  of  State,  228 
Shaku  Soyen,  286 
Shanghai  Mercury,  The,  195 
Sherman,  John,  196,  199 
Shintoism,  310 


INDEX 


399 


Siam,  first  diplomatic  relations  with, 

192 
Slater,  99,    183,  254,  261,  288,  304, 

305,  315,  389 
Smith,  Bosworth,  245,  269,  275 
Smyth,  39,  268 
Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the 

Gospel,  The,  199 
Sons  and  Daughters  of  India,  273 
South  America,  44,  360,  361 
Spectator,  The,  204,  227 
Standard  of  membership  in  native 

churches,  154-160 
Staunton,  Sir  George,  181 
Stead,  W.  T.,  189 
Stewart,  James,  82,  87,  148 
Stokes  and  the  ascetic  ideal,  86 
Stratford  de  Redcliffe,  228,  229 
Sukumar,  Haldar,  245 
Sun,  The  New  York,  45,  183,  204 
Sunday  School  Times,  The,  173,  340 
Swadeshi,    126 
Swift,  354 
Sybel,  232 

Taft,  President,  38,  209,  376 

Taiping  Rebellion,  75,  173,  186 

Taoism,  263 

Taylor,  Canon,  85,  87,  290 

Taylor,  Hudson,  64 

Territorial  division  of  field,  342-344 

Thompson,  Joseph,  39,  193 

Thompson,    Sir    Augustus    Rivers, 

38i 
Townsend,  Meredith,  42,  68,  71,  87, 

129,  266,  375 
Travancore,  183 
Trench,  263 
Troeltsch,  258 
Truth,  attitude  of  religions  toward, 

278 
Tuan  Fang,  182,  224 
Tubbs,  Norman  H.,  310 
Tucker,  Bishop,  135,  136 
Turkey,    religious    liberty    in,    228- 

231 


Uchimura,  28,  30,  264 

Uganda,  Missions  in,  134,  135,  136; 
secured  to  Great  Britain  by  Mis- 
sions, 193 

United  India  and  Native  States, 
The,  386 

Upanishads,  245,  256 

Uyemura,  147 

Vambery,  Arminius,  51,  67,  68,  71, 

232,  251,  392 
Van  Valkenburgh,  228 
Vedanta,  250,  256,  273,  309,  315 
Venn,  Henry,  127 
Verbeck,  215,  281 
Virchand  F.  Gandhi,  252 
Vivakananda,  243,  257,  258,  266 
Von  Hoist,  232 

Wade,  207 

Walsh,  360 

Warneck,  128,  133 

Warren,  Sir  Charles,  381 

Washington,  367 

Washington  Post,  The,  213,  214 

Watson,  71 

Weightman,  Richard,  213 

Wells,  148,  367 

Westcott,  Bishop,  288 

Whipple,  Bishop,   171,  172 

Whitehead,  Bishop,  282 

Wilder,  Consul-General  at  Hong 
Kong,  29 

Williams,  S.  Wells,  191,  216-219, 
390,  39i 

Williams,  Talcott,  41 

Winchester,  Bishop  of,  323 

Woman,  attitude  of  religions  to- 
ward, 279,  280,  388 

Wong,  382 

Wood.  192 

Woolsey,  211 

Yen,  182 

Young,  Sir  W.  Mackworth,  186 


6402j> 


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